


Silhouette

by AntivanCrafts



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Basically, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Trans Character, F/F, Gen, M/M, a story that goes from "how would a modern kirkwall function", also anders and justice are a system, and everything hurts, and nobody dies, everyone is neurodivergent/trans/gay, to "how would an autistic/ptsd perspective influence the narrative"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 25,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9435872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntivanCrafts/pseuds/AntivanCrafts
Summary: A modern day Kirkwall is crumbling at the foundations even as it tightens its stranglehold on its citizens. One of them, Garrett Hawke, has more than one reason to see it fall with a smile, but when has anything ever been that easy...





	1. Chapter 1

They’d converted the science lab into a detention hall, same way they did every weekend, and Garrett found himself wrinkling his nose in disgust as he was nearly overcome with the familiar smells of old cleaner and older cigarette smoke, the same way they did every weekend. The building was old, and they never had gotten around to installing air conditioners into this side of the building the way they always said they were. His back crawled. He hated being sweaty, but he hated being exposed, more.

He paused before crossing through the door. It was part of the ritual. Take a breath, then another, let it out slow and deep. Center yourself, he remembered hearing many, many times. Don’t let them see they get to you. He took a third, then a fourth, forcing his shoulders back and a swagger to his step before he crossed the threshold.

It felt even hotter inside, if at all possible, the low hum of conversation muffled as if under a thick blanket. He swallowed back a small noise of discontent and started towards the left side of the room, checking the four corners and blind spots as he did.

There were five other students scattered around the room when he came in, two of them already known to him. There was Athenril over in her usual spot in the corner doing a brisk trade with Meeran, who was scowling but begrudgingly handing over a set of keys, which Athenril took with a mocking bow from her seat. She said something he couldn’t hear but which made Meeran’s face go red. In the other corner was a kid slumped over on their desk. Sleeping, or so he thought at first. They were practically enveloped in a tattered sweatshirt, but he could just barely make out a thin loop of cable leading from the front pocket up into the hood, and tinny, muffled music.

An elf with half of her hair plaited in tiny, tight braids already sat in his preferred seat, legs folded up beneath her as she sat forward. A bottle of black nail polish sat beside her, and she gesticulated with stiff hands as she spoke rapidly in what he thought might be Dalish to the girl in front of her before turning to him, the curling arches of a full facial tattoo crinkling her face when she smiled. “Oh, I know you!” He had a glimpse of a gap between her front teeth before she turned to the other girl again, braids swinging. “That’s Hawke! You remember, right? The one that broke into the AV room to broadcast youtube videos over the morning announcements? I liked the noises.”

Garrett hunched his shoulders, mouth twisting in an attempt at a smile he didn’t feel. The change in his usual routine already had his back up, and he had to work hard to remember to make eye contact. “Figured that would be more interesting than principal Stannard’s usual crap,” he muttered, which earned him an approving look from the second girl, who swiped heavy curls away from her face with fingers that were almost the same warm brown color his father’s eyes had been.

“You were right,” she told him. She had what uncle Gamlen called whiskey eyes, and what Bethany used to call sleepy. They hung at half mast, watching him from beneath long lashes as he settled himself into the desk behind the windowsill. He tried not to twitch from the weight of her gaze as he piled his things up in the rack underneath the desk. Being watched always put him in mind of other things, other days, and it was an effort to keep the smile on his face as he looked back up at her. She was still watching him, heavy brows arching up towards the blue slash of a bandanna she wore in her hair. “Not saying it was an improvement, but more interesting? Sure, I’ll give you that.”

“Thanks,” he said automatically, not knowing what else there was to say, especially not that the whole setup had been a diversion. That wasn’t the sort of thing you told your cellmates in detention, at least not if you didn’t want it splashed all over the school newspaper Monday morning.

Thankfully, he was spared having to embarrass himself further by the arrival of Orsino, the science teacher. He’d never covered detention before that Garrett knew of, and he would know, having been the veteran of many Saturdays spent whiled away in this very room. He wondered if Orsino was being punished, too. He wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.

Rumor had it he and Stannard were clashing over school policies again. Orsino certainly looked tired, more than usual, the bags under his eyes settled into deep grooves that tilted when he smiled. “I’m sure you all have places you’d much rather be today, as do I, so let’s all agree to make this process as painless as possible for each other. I,” he said, jiggling a thermos, “have a date with earl grey and The Kiss of the Outlander. I’m sure you can all find ways to entertain yourselves that don’t involve setting fire to things.” And with that, he sat back with a worn paperback and proceeded to tune them all out, sipping absently at a drink that very definitely did not smell like tea as the room immediately burst into chatter.

“So,” the second girl said, propping her cheek up on a hand, “what are you in for, sweets?”

Garrett started to answer until he realized that she wasn’t talking to him but to the elf girl, who immediately launched into a long, rambling account that that he had trouble following. Feeling awkward, he looked away, and gave a start when he saw the kid in the sweatshirt looking back at him. Bright green eyes framed by a cloud of white hair met his only briefly before darting away and then back, as if checking that he was still there, or reassuring themselves of something. Himself, he corrected silently. And it was a him, he was pretty sure, because he recognized the face peeking out from under that heavy hood. The stark tracery of scars on his chin were pretty distinctive.

Everyone knew Fenris, or of him.

It was only when Fenris actually spoke that Garrett realized that he was staring, and gave a start. “If you are trying to pick a fight, you are not doing a very good job of it.” His voice was hoarse and thick with an accent he couldn’t place.

Garrett furrowed his brow, remembering only belatedly Fenris’s reputation for violence, and let his eyes drop. He shrugged. “If I was trying to start a fight, you’d know,” he said mildly, and could practically feel Fenris’s expression change, though to what, he wasn’t sure. After a moment or two, he glanced up, expecting outrage or interest or any of a dozen other things, and found himself disappointed to discover that Fenris was withdrawn into his sweatshirt again and turned up his music. Now that he could hear it better, he thought he might be able to pick out a word here or there, but the words were utterly unfamiliar.

He huffed before remembering himself, but was unable to stop himself from crossing his arms as he turned back around, only to jump when he saw both girls grinning at him. The second girl started to golf clap at him. “Oh, very impressive,” she said with a laugh. “I was shivering in my faux leather boots.”

The first girl was near bouncing in her seat, dark eyes bright and shining. “I forgot you had those!” She said in breathless delight, before coloring, her olive toned cheeks darkening as she flashed a sideways smile at Garrett. “It really was very nice!” She hastened to assure him. “If it had been on tv I’d have been very intimidated! It almost sounded convincing!”

Garret wasn unsure if she was being sincere or not, and rather than committing to an answer, he instead looked at the second girl, who wasn’t bothering to hide one inch of her amusement. “Don’t you have better things to do than eavesdrop?” He tried to sound tough, but it came out a tad more uncertain than he’d have liked.

“No,” she said without hesitation. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but,” she said, spreading her hands, “we are in the hole. You are my cable tv, my full speed wireless internet connection, and right now you are broadcasting a very pleasing shade of scarlet. Looks good on you.”

Put even further off balance, Garrett averted his gaze out the portion of the window he could see out of, and started when he saw a familiar lanky form spread out on a blanket on the lawn. He grinned despite himself, and started to lift his hand to wave before he remembered where he was and turned it into a scratch to his cheek. His skin was still warm.

“Bela,” came a smiling voice, and he looked up to see the second girl extending a hand, which he took. She had a very firm handshake, he couldn’t help but notice. She had strange callouses on her palms and fingertips, and he frowned as he took his hand back. “This is Merrill. We’re actually supposed to be at roller derby practice, but apparently” she said, casting a fond glance at Merrill, “somebody decided that hacking into the school’s computers was a better use of our time.”

“It was!” Merrill wrinkled her nose in what he could only imagine was a familiar exchange. He wondered if he was intruding. “I needed information they don’t keep in the student section of the library,” she said, and he noticed that the two girls’ legs were braced across the others, and wondered when they’d done that.

“Why?” He asked, trying his best not to wear the guilty look of someone who had helped break into the permanent records earlier that morning.

Merrill opened her mouth, but Bela spoke first. “I heard one of the teachers had a recipe for gulab jamun,” she said with a smile that did not attempt to be in the least bit convincing. He found himself smiling back.

“Okay,” he said, “I know why she’s in here, but why are you here?”

“Much the same reason as you, I think,” she said, and he started to say that he hadn’t heard anything about her being on the intercoms when he caught sight of her slow, spreading smile, and turned his attention down to his hands so that she wouldn’t catch his expression. He wasn’t sure if it worked.

“I don’t hear the sound of little brains buzzing,” Orsino said from the front of the room, and Garrett gratefully turned his attention away from the uncomfortably revealing conversation, at least for a while.


	2. Chapter 2

_‘-have students of my own now, everything is much better,’_ Garrett muttered to himself a week later, brows drawing down, mouth moving silently as he read aloud to himself from a letter he’d long since memorized. He didn’t need to look at it to know what it said, but still he found his eyes drawn back down, flickering over the embossed seal at the top without quite seeing it and down to the tight, careful handwriting beneath. Garrett smoothed out crinkled paper with shaking hands. He was almost unaware of the tight clench to his mouth until there came a loud bang.

Garrett reacted instantly, without thought, twisting half in and half out of his seat as he brought up hands that flew out wide as his feet got fouled up in his backpack. He went down in a tangle of arms and legs and an involuntary noise that scraped his throat raw. He lay there on the floor for long seconds afterwards, staring wide eyed up at the ceiling as he waited for the beating of his heart to settle back to a normal rhythm.

He gradually became aware of the world beyond the tight press of his ribs trickling back in. Laughter, and then, after a moment, a semicircle of faces that eclipsed the stuttering overhead lights. “Not getting out of detention that easy,” said Bela, her usual drawl pinched, almost sheepish. It was only then that he noticed the stack of books she’d dropped down on the desk she’d claimed as her own. He looked away and back up to Isabela’s hand. He accepted it, and that of the redhead beside her. The two of them pulled him up and set him back on his feet easily, in one smooth, fluid motion that almost looked practiced. He turned a smile that was more of a grimace at the redhead, who returned it with a nod of her head.

“Alright, Hawke?”

Still lagging a few seconds behind, it took Garrett a moment to recognize her. She was Aveline Hendyr, the most visible face of the student council, and one of the first people he had met on entering PS937. “What are you doing in detention?” He asked slowly. “Aren’t you usually organizing bake sales or. Something?”

“I’m not,” she said with a roll of shoulders wider than Garrett’s own. “I’m visiting someone.”

“I’m knew you’d come back for me,” Bela grinned, leaning against Aveline with a hand against her brow. “Carry me away from all of this, Aveline!”

“Not you,” Aveline grimaced. She’d kept her hands unmoving at her sides, simply bearing Isabela’s weight. As she spoke, she shifted her weight to her forward foot before actually moving away, giving Bela time to readjust her weight so that she did not fall, or at least, not the way Garrett had. Instead, she turned and flopped into a giggling Merrill’s lap as Aveline moved past Garrett. He turned to keep her in sight, and so he saw her stand beside Fenris who, if Garrett didn’t know better, would have sworn that he hadn’t moved one single inch since last Saturday. She spoke in a low tone that was frustratingly hard to hear over the creak of the overhead fans, and so he turned around in time to see Isabela lift her eyes from where she’d clearly been reading Garrett’s mail upside down.

“Girlfriend troubles?” She asked sympathetically, shooting Merrill a sideways glancing smirk when Garrett snatched the letter against his chest, only to pale and lay it back down, smoothing out where he’d crumpled it in his haste.

“It’s from my sister,” he said, not looking up from his work. It was easier, not having to see their expressions.

“Where is she?” Merrill was the first to ask, then, “Did she die? I’m very sorry, my own-” Bela hissed something he didn’t quite hear in what he suspected was Rivaini, and there was a terse whispered conversation that settled into a brief silence. Garrett let it drag on, fingers lingering on thick blotches of ink that scored the paper where chantry censors had blotted out large portions of the letter. His eyes started to cross, he was staring hard enough, trying to will what was written beneath to rise to the surface.

It was only at a sharp “Dostatochno!” in a thick, cracked voice from behind him that prompted Garrett and the room, as one, to turn around. Fenris had lifted his head from bent arms, swiftly enough that his headphone cords still swung. Garrett couldn’t see into the updrawn hood of Fenris’s sweatshirt from this angle, only the clench of scarred hands on the desktop. “Enough, Aveline,” Fenris said, more calmly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Aveline said, quieter still, but there was enough frustration in her words that she got louder with every word out of her mouth. She hissed out a sigh through her mouth and crossed heavily muscled arms across her chest. “What do I have to say to convince you to make a statement? This will be more than enough to-”

The hood moved swiftly, affording Garrett a brief glimpse of a flash of green as Fenris stood, standing at his full height to press his face in as close to Aveline’s as he could. “I said I’d handle it and I am.” Garrett had expected a snarl, from Fenris’s reputation, but his words were slow, deliberate, and pitched to carry across the whole room, as Garrett realized when Fenris went on to say, “It’s not your business any more than it is theirs.” And looked across the room with a sweep of his eyes before stalking out of the room, right past Orsino, who turned his head to follow after him with a mild expression, moving only to mark a note on his paperwork.

“Well,” Orsino said into the silence, “that was thrilling, wasn’t it? I trust that no one else has a dramatic exit to make, such as, just to make a wild example, ms. Hendyr?”

Aveline had the good grace to blush beneath her freckles, and started up the aisle. She bumped heavily against Isabela’s shoulder as she went, carrying on without pause up and out of the room, leaving Bela to open up the note that had been swiftly passed from hand to hand. “Aveline says to keep it up,” Isabela told Merrill once the usual hum of conversation began again, tucking the note into the top of her shirt.

Garrett coughed and averted his gaze up to meet two amused gazes. “Keep what up?”

Bela didn’t seem particular to share, but Merrill must have taken pity on him, because she said, “The mayhem!”

“The mayhem. I’m sorry,” he said slowly, “I must be a bit lost, or maybe you are. Aveline, school council Aveline, asked you to…? Uh. You know what?” Garrett shook his head and settled back into his seat. He didn’t want to get involved with this. He had too much to worry about already, what with Bethany and Anders and- no. No. “Never mind.”

“Probably a wise decision, sweets,” Bela told him. She had the fingers of one uplifted hand crooked over her shoulder, pulling away from Merrill’s. There was a triangular shaped folded piece of paper held between two fingers, and she wiggled it with a crook of one brow. “Wouldn’t want to get caught up in anything dangerous. Better to stay safe and snug at home and wait to catch it from the rumor mill.” Garrett hesitated, knowing full well that he was being played, but something, something that tugged at old thoughts and older urges, made him snatch the paper away. It was the lack of a smirk on Bela’s face that was more infuriating than anything else, he decided.

He waited to read it until after Bela and Merrill had turned back around to whisper to each other before he opened the paper. There was symbol on it in red that he recognized from graffiti he’d seen on the way to school, graffiti that somehow kept reappearing no matter how often the city paid to have it scrubbed away. It looked like it’d been drawn with somebody’s fingers, fading out on the long drag of four downward facing lines. Wings, maybe. Written on top were the words _'9 o’clock, the old clinic'_ in a cramped, spidery writing that he recognized with a distinct thump in his chest.

His mouth worked slowly, reading it over and over again, the way he had with Bethany’s letter earlier, and at last lifted his gaze to stare out the window where a tawny head of hair was bent over what he knew, knew, was the stray cat that roamed the school grounds.

Without giving it conscious thought, Garrett stood and walked out of detention without a backwards glance.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes Garrett had trouble deciding if what he was experiencing was quite real. If the things he heard and experienced were really happening to him, or if he was watching a distant echo, going through the motions of a half remembered play he'd suddenly found himself cast in the role of understudy for.

Making his way through the abandoned hallways of PS937 felt like that to him now, felt almost like deja vu. Sometimes this feeling was alarming, but today he retreated into it gratefully, let it slide over him like the familiar weight of his old coat. Garrett clutched it closer to himself absently, an automatic movement he'd done a hundred, a thousand times before, and would again. The coat wasn't appropriate to the weather, was better suited to a place half a country and entire lifetimes away, but still he found himself shrugging into it every morning before he left the house the same way his father had each and every morning for as long as he could remember, until the day he hadn't.

As he walked, Garrett’s hand found its way into the side pocket and slid over the smooth finish of a photograph. It was a calming gesture, a habit built brick by brick. He didn't take it out to look at it, didn't need to. He knew what he would see. Touching it was enough. Was an anchor, tethering him to the here and now so he wouldn't fly away.

It worked, to a certain extent. He remembered to turn his feet away from his customary route, one that would take him to an age spotted blanket and a grinning face. He instead wound his way through the maze of side streets and alleys he’d long since committed to memory, a route that avoided the usual bottlenecks where the late afternoon crowds gathered and heaved. Even the thought of the close proximity of so many people and sensations put his teeth on edge, and Garrett dipped a hand into his pocket to toy with a link of chain he'd found, flipping it forward and back and over onto itself again and again, in time with his steps.

He hadn't paid much attention to where he was going, letting his feet take him on automatic so that he could retreat into the soothing slide of metal on metal, and so he was mildly surprised to find himself standing at bottom of the flight of stairs that led to the public library. It hadn't seemed like he'd been walking for that long, but a glance at where the sun peeked between buildings told him a different story.

He didn't need a watch to tell him that it was going on six o'clock. His father had taught him how to tell time without one from the time he could count, so he was confident that he had plenty of time before closing as he climbed the steps into the library.

Like everything else seemed to be on this side of Kirkwall, the library was old. Old enough that some had said it ought to have been torn down and renovated long before now, but that was what they always said, and here it was, day after day, a reliable bit of permanence in a city without.

The foyer opened up into a wide room fenced in at odd angles with stacks of books and magazines and newspapers. The ceiling extended high above, and for good reason. Half of the empty space was devoted to a crumbling dragon etched in cheerful, if faded, reds and purples that hung from the ceiling by strings and hooks, the other half to the research stacks. The research stacks were on catwalks that always put a stinging, metallic taste in his mouth for reasons he didn't care to think on. He didn't go up there much.

He instead turned his feet to the staircase that led to the basement, past posters they hadn't changed since the day he'd arrived and probably long before, down and down to where the children’s section was.

He liked it down here. Not because it was quiet, necessarily, but it had the soft weight of drifting snow settling upon your shoulders that all old libraries had when you were alone, or so he'd always thought. He almost expected to see a pair of dark curls darting through the stacks when he lifted his head, but it was only to see the probationary assistant librarian. He tried to hide his disappointment, but he suspected Varric knew anyway.

“You're early, Bobbin,” Varric said, heaving a stack of picture books onto the check-out desk so that he could peer at him. Garrett usually didn't much like having people look at him like that, like he was going to break if they breathed wrong, but from Varric, he found he didn't mind.

Garrett managed a smile for him. Shrugged and huddled deeper into his coat as he pretended to be deeply interested in ‘The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.’ “Had nothing better to do.”

“Won't argue that the library is better than detention, but I think there are a few who would.” Garrett very deliberately didn't look away from the cover as he gave a another, more emphatic shrug. “Does your-”

“They're fine, Varric,” Garrett said a bit too loudly. “Everything's fine.”

There was a shuffle, and Garrett looked up to see Varric leaning against the desk, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’m not trying to start a fight, Bobbin,” Varric said. The corner of his mouth quirked, though Garrett couldn't decide if it was up or down or if it mattered. “I just don't want you to, uh. Find yourself going on a sudden and indefinite vacation, put it that way.”

“You know I’m careful.” What heat there had been in his voice left, bit by bit. It was hard to stay angry at one of the few friends he'd managed to make, and keep, since coming here. “I follow the rules.”

“Good,” Varric said, and there was one of his real smiles, not the ones he showed to the templar inspectors. “I just-” He closed his eyes and brought his uplifted hand down to scrub at his eyes. “There’s a lot going on these days, too much for any one person to keep up with, even me. Call me a brooding hen if you want, but I can't help but worry. Don't want you staying out past curfew and disappearing like your sister.”

Garrett was distantly relieved that Varric didn't see the brief flash of panic chase itself across his face. Curfew. His mouth parted, only just shy of releasing a small, strangled noise before he forced it back down. Every Kirkwall citizen knew down to the minute when curfew was, except, it seemed, for him. He hadn't even given the time of the meeting on Isabela’s paper a second thought until now, he'd been so-

Was there even a word for it? For feeling like the world was almost an afterthought?

“Varric,” he said slowly, once he was certain that he had his voice under control, “what did you do, before you came here? Before Kirkwall?”

Varric’s smile stiffened for a fraction of a second, until he forced it smooth. “Same thing I do here,” Varric said in that smooth, buttery voice that Garrett’s mother said ought to have been on the radio. “I was born a librarian, I’ll die a librarian.”

Garrett had to avert his gaze before the twist to his mouth became too obvious. He watched the clenching and unclenching of his own white knuckled fist with a distant sort of fascination, remembering how Varric had told him once that he'd used to write his own books, before Kirkwall. Bestsellers, even. Remembered the slight shake in Varric’s voice when he'd said-

“Mind if I stay here until closing time, Varric?” He heard himself say. “I wanted to find out the ending to that book you showed me last time.”

Varric visibly relaxed. “Only if you don't give me a full report afterwards,” he told Garrett, and waved him away, turning back to the picture books. Neither saw the carefully maintained face the other had held during the conversation drop, nor did Garrett see Varric slip the folded scrap of paper he'd lifted from Garrett from hand to hand. When Varric caught sight of what hid between the folds, he heaved out another sigh and dropped his head onto his hands. “Shit.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Hey! Hey! Hawke, calm down! You're safe! Just- Hawke!”

Garrett shuddered as his eyes flew open, giving a strangled cry at seeing Varric looming large in his vision, too close and too unexpected and too much. He recoiled with a jerk, sucking in a sudden, gasping breath and then another, feeling like all of the air had been driven out of his chest by a punch to the solar plexus. He sagged against the wall at his back, barely noticing that one of his hands had come up reflexively without his telling it to, mindful only of the white noise shrieking in his ears.

“Wait.” He turned his face away from Varric’s face and squeezed his eyes shut tight. His uplifted hand shivered and twitched to follow when he heard Varric move, but he didn't shove Varric away, didn't reach for him, didn't do anything but hold it up. “Wait.” His other hand was already in his pocket, running down and around smooth plastic in familiar, soothing patterns. “Surprised me,” he rasped after the silence had dragged on long enough that the rapid tattoo beating on the inside of his skull wasn't quite so loud.

“Yeah, I caught that. Sorry,” Varric was saying from somewhere a thousand miles and a few feet feet away. Garrett opened his eyes. It was hard to hear if he couldn't see. “You must have fallen asleep. I just came by to let you know that it's time to close up shop, and, well, you were either contemplating the mysteries of the universe or trying out bear mating calls. Or both.”

Garrett heaved out a sound that might have been a laugh and might have been a sigh. “You're better at them,” he said. Thought maybe Varric laughed, but he was already turning his thoughts back, frowning as he paged through them, trying to remember what he had dreamed about, if anything, but whatever it was that had locked up his jaw so tight in his sleep that it still ached was already hard to grasp.

Something about the rain, maybe, he thought, but even that was uncertain, and he wasn't sure if he was even making the right connections. Sometimes when he dreamed, it pinged parts of his brain that didn't make any sense. He let it go with a sigh. Dropped his hand and looked up and past Varric, out one of the narrow windows high up on the wall. There was light coming through, still, but faint and tinged the pink-y gold color of a ripe peach.

Time and past to leave.

He smiled apologetically, which was around the time that he realized that Varric had still been talking. He nodded, hoped he hadn't missed anything important, and made a few vague agreeable noises as he started to gather up the books he'd spread out around him before he'd fallen asleep. Like every book in Kirkwall that had been deemed wasteful by the chantry, the spine, covers, and identifying pages of each book had been removed, leaving him to puzzle out the codes previous readers had scrawled in the margins to figure out which book was which in order to put them in some semblance of order for Varric. That done, he grabbed his backpack and started up the stairs, pausing along the way out to reach up towards the dragon as if he could touch it, the same way he had for months.

And then he was back out on the street, hit by a rush of cool air, scented with salt and smoke. Garrett wrinkled his nose and buried his face deeper into the thin scarf looped around his neck before he turned his steps downtown, quite literally, and towards the sea.

Conscious of the weight of Varric’s eyes on him, Garrett hurried deeper into Lowtown’s labyrinthine streets and away from the staircases to Darktown, following his usual meandering path that avoided the main thoroughfares and pockets of civilization. He gave it a little longer than perhaps was necessary before he decided that it was safe to relax, to change course, but just knowing what he was about to do had him on edge.

One by one, streetlamps flickered to life around him as he picked his way back towards the staircases, wading through pools of light that only served to make him more nervous, instead of less. Curfew was fast approaching. He had to get off the streets, and fast.

His phone vibrated in his pocket when he at last stepped off of the Lowtown streets and onto a winding staircase. He ignored it, hurried down the stairs two at a time, faster and faster. He could almost feel the crushing weight of the templar patrols breathing down his neck, and his panted breaths were halfway to a sob when he finally reached the bottom, tearing out of his throat just ahead of words he swallowed back down. Ignore it, he told himself. Keep going.

So he did.

The walk to where Lowtown met Darktown seemed to take longer than it should have, and he started to fidget with the chain in his pocket again as he walked. It was better than the flapping he'd used to do, he reminded himself. Quiet. Less distracting. It wasn't as satisfying for the anxiety building in his chest, though seeing his destination before him did help that somewhat.

About half a block ahead the street branched into several narrow side paths that split away from the main road, which was clogged full of people in templar colors inspecting cars. Beyond lay the Viscount’s Gate, an ugly thing of steel and wire that was more at home at a prison than an entrance to the poorest area of the city.

Officially, Darktown was only accessible through this and three other manned gates, each of which was supposed to “keep the streets safe” but which in truth only served as toll booths to line the guards’ pockets. Live in Kirkwall long enough, though, and you’d learn any number of ways around what most thought of as more of an inconvenience than a true barrier in the way of their business, honest or not.

The only people that still used this road were the ones who wanted to be seen using it. Everyone else slipped off the main road, as Garrett was doing now, and took the smallest side street down to where rickety houses sat on stilts so as to escape the floodwaters that made the neighboring sewerline rise every spring.

Pausing only to readjust his scarf over his nose, Garrett hunched beneath the closest house and made his way over to where it met the city wall. There, as he knew there would be, was an open manhole cover and a flickering lantern that shone fully off the rusted metal ladder that led beneath the streets.

One he'd reached the bottom, even the sickening squelch and slight sinking sensation as his sneakers sank into things best not lingered on couldn't manage to dim his relief. The templars rarely bothered to search past the Darktown gates. He was safe here until morning. From the templars, at least, he reminded himself, which was true enough.

He couldn't explain even to himself why he had decided to do this, why Isabela and her suicidal ideas of fun were worth the risk of finding himself in a chantry holding cell or worse, but. There was something there, some stubborn twinge at the thought of Bethany that made him hurry his steps towards the clinic.

He'd only found himself in need of it once, but Anders had made sure that Garrett could find his way there. He hadn't wondered why, at the time. Maybe he should have.

As he turned the last obstacle and got within a few feet of the clinic, he heard a familiar, lilting voice. “-know any Dalish. Sorry.” Merrill. “My-” She made an indecipherable noise, then, “Doesn't matter. Ask Athenril, maybe. She has contacts outside the city.”

He slowed as he approached the entrance to the clinic, which sounded more impressive than it was. A patched blanket hung over a large hole in the wall, flanked by two LED lanterns that cast strange shadows as he hesitated just shy of the blanket, a strange reluctance making him draw his hand back against his chest. What if he was making a mistake?

“We can't rely on her,” said a voice he recognized as Anders’s, specifically the tired exhales punctuating every few words he used when he was tired or frustrated. “It's great that she got us the keys, but we shouldn't have used her in the first place. She never does anything that doesn't benefit her in the long run.”

There was a murmuring reply that he couldn't quite make out. He had to concentrate even to understand Anders’s response. There were too many voices, too many background noises that made it hard for him to parse what he heard. “That's different. I know you know him better than I do-”

Another pause where someone spoke, which actually got a laugh from Anders before we went on, “Well. That said, we couldn't just-” There was silence for the space of a few breaths. He could almost imagine Anders pacing. “I had to be sure. We had to. Anyone outside this circle could bring us down, even Malcolm Hawke’s child.”

Garrett couldn't hold back the surprised noise he made at hearing his father’s name, which got an immediate, almost terrifyingly fast response. Within the space of a heartbeat, two, the blanket shielding him from view was ripped away, and in its place was the business end of a very solid, very real sword.

Garrett went cross-eyed looking down the other end of it Isabela, who looked just as surprised as he imagined he did. “Hawke?” She didn't, he notice, lower the sword, and he blinked at it, trying to reconcile its very existence with the girl in the dayglo roller derby uniform holding it, without much success.

“Is that a sword?” Garrett lifted a hand to touch it, earning a strange noise from Isabela, though she did lower it back to her side.

“No,” she said. “It's _my_ sword. Big difference.” She looked over at Anders, who had lifted a hand to rub between his eyes. “Well, you wanted him here, here he is.”

Anders let out another sigh that contained multitudes and let his hand drop away. “Garrett,” he said with a smile. Garrett’s eyes flickered away from Anders’s own teardrop shaped ones when Anders looked at him, and he couldn't help but notice that blue-black roots were showing where Anders had dyed his hair. That told Garrett a lot more about how Anders was these days than anything he could have said. He may not have known Anders for very long, comparatively speaking, but he already knew that, for whatever reason, it mattered to him. A lot. “It's good to-”

Garrett held up a hand, both to interrupt Anders and to put distance between them. “No.”

Anders didn't do anything so trite as raise his eyebrows, but he looked like he wanted to. “No?”

Garrett crossed his arms across his chest. “No. You don't get to do that,” he said stiffly. His every nerve jangled harshly at the weight of so many eyes on him, but he tried his best to speak over top of it, his voice rising in volume and pitch as he grew more agitated. “You lied to me. Used me. And now, you- I don't even know what's going on right now. But I don't like it.”

Anders swallowed, eyes flickering down and away as he gave a faint smile. “I know. But-”

“What does Justice think of this?” Garrett thrust out his jaw at a stubborn angle, and almost, but not quite met Anders’s eyes as he glared at a spot just between them.

“Hawke…” Anders sighed. He settled back on his heels and passed a hand over his face. When it fell away, his face had settled into sharp angles around his mouth. “Garrett. You know it's doesn't work like-”

“The hell it doesn't,” Garrett interrupted. “Is he awake? I want to talk to him.”

Anders screwed his eyes shut and started to say something else before he sagged. “Fine,” he muttered, then, “fine. Hang on, let me just…” Anders fished out a battered cellphone from one of his innumerable pockets. The phone was at least ten years out of date, but that was the best that could be gotten in Kirkwall, and suitable enough for their purposes.

Anders’s thumbs and index fingers flew across the touchscreen before he turned it around and handed it to Garrett. _‘Hello, Rhett,’_ it said across the screen.

“Hi, Justice,” Garrett said to the phone. Not because he expected it to talk back, but because he didn't really care to look at Anders right now.

Anders typed some more. _‘I knew,’_ the screen read, _'but did not approve.'_  Garrett was not so proud that he didn't shoot Anders a look for that, before looking back down. _‘We should have told you from the start. However. Are you sure you want to know?’_

Garrett hesitated, chewing on the soft skin inside of his lip, then gave a shrug that was nowhere near as casual as he wanted it to be. “No.” He paused, furrowing his brow, before going on slowly, “Are you?”


	5. Chapter 5

His words hung heavy in the air for a few moments, dragging his eyes back down to his feet. There was a brief silence that he got the impression was filled with silent communication, and then he heard shuffling moment, and looked up to see Merrill and Isabela standing from where they'd been lounging. “Very impressive speech, Hawke,” Isabela said as she stretched. Hawke looked away, over to Merrill, who smiled at him.

“You look rather pale,” she whispered, and pressed a small pouch into his hands.

“What is this?” He asked, puzzled, and emptied it out into his palm. There was a stick of bubblegum in silver foil, a single m&m, and a portable flash drive. “Everything you need!” She said brightly, and added, “The m&m is for you. I was going to save you the green one, but she's my favorite,” she added guiltily. “You don't mind, do you?”

“Uh. No,” he said. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to have minded, exactly, or what a usb stick or gum were for, but thought it might be too late to ask, so he didn't. He waited, then, when Merrill continued simply to smile at him, stretched his lips up in an approximation of a smile back and looked, rather gratefully, over to Anders, who had started to speak.

“-might as well show you where you'll be spending the night,” he was saying. Hawke wondered if he'd missed the part where that had been decided, and opened his mouth.

“If you'd prefer,” Anders said with one of his crooked smiles that didn't quite reach the rest of his face, “you could leave, but this is the safest place you can find without leaving Darktown. Unless you want to risk running into patrols, which, I don't.”

Hawke closed his mouth.

Lacking any better option, he followed after the trio as they headed deeper into the clinic. They talked back and forth as they walked, and he had to concentrate to hear them one at a time, which meant that he missed a lot of the flow of conversation, but it was the best he could do.

Isabela had thrown up her hands after a comment from Anders, each one glittering with jewelry that caught his eyes, almost dragging his attention away until he heard her start to speak. He looked back up in time to catch part of the trail of words. “-just here for the food,” she was saying.

Garrett looked around. There was no food that he could see, just row after row of cots filled with shifting, snoring, and groaning people. They passed beyond this room and into what he supposed was a combination bedroom/office. Desks and milk crates and sagging tables took up the bulk of the space, each covered with paper. The only indication he had that someone actually lived here was a small cot shoved into the corner. A scruffy cat with one ear snoozed on a wadded up blanket at the foot of the cot.

Feeling awkward, and not wanting to stand in the door and look even more awkward as the others made their way to spots they'd clearly already chosen for themselves, he picked his way through the room and sat next to the cat, who flicked its remaining ear at him before rolling over onto its back. He gingerly pet its stomach, and relaxed when it started to purr.

“-yourself at home.” Garrett looked up guiltily at Anders, who he was relieved to see smiling. Beyond him, in a portion of the room he hadn't previously seen, was a small knot of people who'd been quietly passing papers back and forth; an older boy with neatly oiled back hair, a woman whose expensive clothes clashed with the wading boots she'd clearly chosen for the sewers, and an elf of indeterminate years who he thought he might have seen talking to Athenril on the school grounds once or twice.

These three looked to have noticed him at the same time, because the boy stood and made his way over to him and stuck out his hand. Hawke hesitated before taking it, and released it quickly. “Welcome to our little party,” the boy said. “I’m Saemus. This is-”

“No names!” The woman quickly interrupted, looking alarmed.

“My mistake,” Saemus winced. “Sorry. Subterfuge isn't my strong suit.”

“You'll get better at it once you're married,” the woman assured him, and looked over at Garrett.

“How about you, then? Anyone waiting at home for you?”

“My mother and uncle,” Garrett said, puzzled at the apparent subject change. “Though they won't be waiting up.” He could feel Anders watching him, though when he looked up, Anders had busied himself with the papers Saemus handed over. Garrett ducked his head deeper into his coat, feeling unease creeping up his chest. He didn't know what he'd expected by coming here, but it wasn't this group of people who talked without saying anything. Who lied.

It took more effort than he'd ever want to admit to, but he lifted his head and said, louder than he'd intended, “Could someone please just talk to me?” He started to cringe back by reflex when the entire room as one looked at him. “I just, um. Don't actually know what I’m doing. Here. Or any of you.”

“We are just trying to stay alive,” Anders said into the silence that had fallen, “and help others do the same. We were hoping that you might help us with that.”

“Me? That's-” When he laughed, it sounded far away. “You don't want me for that.”

“Of course we do. I’ve known you for months now,” Anders said, coming to kneel before him. Garrett turned his attention down to the cat in order to avoid looking at Anders. It was a long haired cat, one that had kittens recently. “And I know what you've suffered, that-”

“You don't know anything.” Garrett couldn't recognize his own voice. It was strange and flat, and hurt.

“That's true,” Anders said slowly, “but you don't know what I have suffered either, or any of us,” he said, gesturing around the room. “Each one of us has lost something, someone, and we want to keep that from happening again. Don't you want that?”

“I want to go to bed,” Garrett said, stroking his fingers through the cat’s soft belly fur. “I don't want to talk anymore.”

Silence fell again, one filled with half a dozen unsaid conversations, and then Anders stood. “Alright, then,” Anders said. “I’ll wake you in the morning.”

When they left, Garrett curled around the cat and stared, unseeing, into the dark as the hours passed slowly before him.  
****

When he woke up, the cat was gone, though he thought he heard it moving under the cot. He lifted the blanket and peeked underneath it to find the cat curled around five squirming bundles of fur. He watched them for a little while, then stood and walked out of the office.

Anders and the others were sleeping on the cots closest to the door leading outside of the clinic. As he passed by the very last one, Isabela opened her eyes. He didn't stop, or speak, and neither did she, simply rolled over and tucked Merrill’s hand back into the neighboring cot where it looked to have fallen out halfway between her cot and Isabela’s.

The walk back to Gamlen’s was long. This early in the morning, the only sound was the morning announcements of the previous day’s crimes over the loudspeakers located on each street corner in Lowtown. He listened, as everyone did, for familiar names, but heard none.

As he did, he almost stepped over something just outside of Gamlen’s that made him pull up sharply. A small spray of green sprouted between the cracks in the sidewalk, surrounding the spiky leaves of a dandelion. That alone would have made him stop, if not for the spray painted message just beside it. The words were old and fading, and partially covered up by other words that were more colorful and louder, but still his eye was drawn to the small, curling letters beneath.

 _Resist_ , it said. The curling edges formed the shape of the rays of the sun.

His mouth twisted, trembling, and he had to clasp a hand over his mouth to hold back the noises building up in his throat, wild sobs that tore at his chest and made him hunch in on himself, leaning against the nearby wall.

People slowed as they passed by him, but nobody stopped, as he didn't look up, down or away from the familiar curling spikes of a sunburst that he had last seen etched on his father’s forehead.

_Look after them. Don't let them fall._

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his face crumpling in fresh misery. “I’m not the person you wanted me to be.”

There was no answer. There never was. 


	6. Chapter 6

Garrett leaned against the door into Gamlen’s apartment for what felt only a moment but could have been far longer. He didn’t check the position of the sun, didn’t want to. Took in a steadying breath, then another when that failed, and opened the door to chaos. 

The neighbor’s children ran in and out of the series of curtains that split the first floor of the building into two apartments, shrieking with laughter or perhaps just shrieking. It was hard for him to puzzle out the emotions of adults at the best of times, let alone children. Trying not to visibly wince, he dropped his backpack onto the chair by the door and looked for his mother or Gamlen. The search didn’t take long. Neither were in the main room, which also served as a bedroom for both his mother and uncle, and he knew they wouldn’t go past the second curtain. The only thing back there was the room he’d used to share with-

He jerked his head away sharply. Swallowing hard to rid his mouth of the taste of ashes, he busied himself picking up the apartment, both of the old toys his mother had lent the neighbors and the general cloud of trash that seemed to follow Gamlen everywhere he went. He could hear the radio on over by the sink. The radio personalities were on at the moment, giving some sort of announcement, but he didn’t listen. Looked down at the bottle in his hands as it started to blur, before giving his head a shake with a sharp, frustrated noise. Frustration welled up in his throat like bile. This was his life now. Cleaning up after a man who had gambled their past away while someone else’s kids played with Bethany and Carver’s things. Waiting every day to hear that one or both of them had died in holding.

He raised his hand as if to throw the bottle at the wall then sagged. Put it by the sink to be cleaned out, and started towards the crockpot to check its contents before he remembered that it wouldn’t have anything in it from last night, because he hadn’t been here to start another meal. He hovered uncertainly for a moment, fingers fluttering at his side in an aborted attempt to flap before he forced them still, even when there was no one here to see who would care.

Movement off to the side drew his eye. Gamlen had an old fashioned answering machine, and the number three was blinking at him. Moving slowly, jerkily, like a puppet that had half of its strings cut, he walked to it and pressed play. “Message one,” said a flat woman’s voice, one that replaced with Athenril’s quick, impatient cant. “Hawke, I think I might have a job for you, if you’re interested. That sweetheart of yours tipped me off to-” He jammed his finger down hard enough on the delete button that it hurt. “Message Deleted. Message two,” said the lady, followed by an unfamiliar man’s voice. “This is a message for the guardians of mister Garrett Hawke. He was seen skipping detention yesterday, and-” Delete. “Message deleted.”

The machine now blinked the number one at him. Garrett stared down at it unseeingly for a long time. He knew what he would hear if he pressed play, but the thought of deleting it made his stomach turn. Before he let himself think better of it, he swiftly pressed play. In the brief pause before it started, he already regretted it, but it was too late. “Hellooo,” Bethany sang, followed by a laugh that made him squeeze his eyes shut in pain. If he just concentrated hard enough, none of this would be real. “Is anyone home? Okay. Good. So. Field hockey ran late today, and I kind of, uh, punchedanothergirlintheface but its fine! Everything’s fine! She deserved it! And the letter you’re gonna get tomorrow is an exaggeration, I swear, and Garrett,” she said, and he had to swallow down a rising laugh, he could just picture her puffing out her cheeks, “if you’re listening, you are the world’s greatest brother, I love you like I love strawberry cheesecake, but if you don’t erase this I will kill you, oh mak-” Whatever she’d been going to say was cut off by a beep, and then the flat, mechanical, “End of final message.”

When it was done, he pressed play again. Then again. He pressed it over and over and over, until a voice behind him made him whirl around, nearly falling over but for the counter against his back. “Are you listening to that shit again?” His uncle Gamlen asked, and raised a hand to scrub down his face. Garrett hadn’t even heard him come in, but there he was, along with three of his friends from the factory. Garrett stiffened, and started to say that he wasn’t, but Gamlen’s lowered brows made him stop, leaving only the neighbor kids and Bethany to fill the silence. “-thing’s fine! She deserved it! And the letter you’re gonna get tomorrow is an exaggeration, I swear-”

“Boy,” Gamlen sighed, looking at him with that expression that everyone eventually got when they looked at him, like he was made of broken glass and would break if you breathed at him wrong. The only question was if their look would be one of frustration or pity. “You have got to stop. You think I want to come home every night to this? It’s gone on long enough.” Garrett swallowed down what he wanted to say, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good, and with what felt like an immense effort pushed himself up and walked to the fridge to look for enough food to feed Gamlen’s friends, because of course he’d be expected to feed all of them.

“Garrett,” Bethany said at his back, speaking faster, knowing the end of the message was fast approaching, “if you’re listening, you are the world’s greatest brother, I lo-” There was a beep that at first confused him, then made his blood run cold. “Message deleted. End of final messages.”

Garrett had gone rigid. It was hard to breathe.

“Good riddance,” said Gamlen from somewhere off in another world. “Listen to that all day? No wonder you mother thinks you’ve gone off the deep end. Was hard enough listening to my own parents,” he went on, but it faded away into a vague white noise.

Garrett turned around and went back to the answering machine. There was a red zero on it. The one was gone. He hit play. Nothing happened.

“-rating, day in and day out, nothing but saint Leandra-”

He hit play. Nothing happened. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, there was static building up in his chest and struggling to come out of his throat-

“-believe me, once you’re older, you’ll thank me, boy,” said someone who was both far away and much too close, and a heavy hand slapped down on his shoulder.

Garrett started to scream.

He screamed until he went hoarse and he kept right on screaming. Someone tried to touch him and he started to scratch himself until they went away. He got dizzy, and dropped to the floor. He didn’t even feel the impact, just the overwhelming surge of too many emotions all at once that rushed through him until everything else didn’t exist, but that, too, ended. Everything had to. Eventually, the pressure in his chest went away, bit by bit, leaving him feeling drained, empty. His chest hurt. His face hurt. He lifted his hands to touch it and there was blood underneath his nails.

Everyone else was gone. The apartment was silent and empty.

He crawled over to the answering machine, and pulled himself up. The number one blinked at him. His breath caught in his throat. Hardly daring to believe it, he pressed play. “Message one,” said the machine, then his mother’s voice filled the room. “Garrett Hawke, I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life. You uncle just called me while I was in front of the viscount petitioning to get our house back, I thought you were dead, I thought you’d been disappeared, but instead I hear you’ve had another episode? I am coming home right now, and we are going to have a serious talk about your-” There was a beep. “End of message.”

Garrett backed away from the answering machine, panting harshly through his nose, and then he turned and ran out of the house. He didn’t know where he was going, except away.

City blocks disappeared beneath his feet, stone by stone. He didn’t stop until the scarf around his neck felt like it was strangling him. He slowed, step by step, and leaned against a streetlamp. He didn’t recognize where he was, not at first. He was on the outskirts of Hightown. There were a few of the mansions that had gone on sale but hadn’t sold yet, outlined by the regular patrols of templars. They weren’t as aggressive, here. Spoke to people politely.

He started to push himself away from the lamppost, when the loudspeaker at the top turned on with a crackle of static, making him jump. “Attention, citizens of Kirkwall,” said today’s announcer. They changed them every day. This one sounded young. A girl, maybe. “Be on the lookout for an elf wanted for questioning on suspicion of harboring maleficars. The elf is described as slight, with brown skin, white hair, and a Tevinter accent. He was last seen leaving Auction Way towards the commons, and should be treated as armed and dangerous. There is a reward of five hundred sovereigns for any information as to his whereabouts. In other news, another band of the roving dissident group that calls itself the Grey Wardens has been seen at the harbor-”

Garrett looked up at the loudspeaker, then down at the street, which was suddenly full of people. Growing uneasy, Garrett backed away and into a narrow, almost claustrophobic side street that narrowed still further a little ways down as it approached the stairs towards Lowtown.

“Harboring maleficars,” snorted a familiar voice. “They really do say whatever they want, don’t they.”


	7. Chapter 7

Fenris watched with a twist to his mouth as Garrett unconsciously echoed his guarded stance, stepping so that only his side was presented, and leaned against the wall as Fenris was doing, opposite. “Quite the hardened criminal,” Fenris said. His expression was hard to read, and that made Garrett’s muscles twitch, preparing for a sudden movement that might not come. “Detention for a prank, and now…” He paused, eyes falling half shut, “You fail to report a known mage sympathizer.” 

Garrett shrugged, burrowing deeper into his father’s coat to hide a wince. “Yeah, well,” he muttered, as if that was any sort of answer.

Fenris seemed to take it as one, because he actually smiled. The expression was quite different the one he'd worn earlier, if small and covered by a shake of his head that brought up one hand to prop against his cheek. “Now that you have caught me,” Fenris said in what could only be called a curious tone, “what exactly do you intend to do?”

Garrett shuffled uncomfortably, remembered pain making him ball his hands into tight fists in his pockets. “Forget this ever happened,” he told Fenris’s shoes. “Wake up tomorrow.” He was tempted to look up when Fenris made a noise, but resisted the impulse. Instead, he watched Fenris’s scuffed boots jiggle back and forth until Fenris seemed to come to a decision.

“Come with me.”

Garrett’s brows drew together. His mouth twisted, opened, then shut. “Why?” He looked up, enough to catch the edge of an expression that made him look back down again.

“Why what?” Fenris didn't sound mocking, at least, though Garrett often found it hard to tell. “Why should you come with me, or why did I ask?”

Garrett thought this over for a reasonable length of time, about thirty seconds, before he answered, “Yes.”

That earned him a laugh. It was low and raspy and seemed to roll through Fenris’s chest. “The answer is the same either way,” he said. “I need to get off of the streets. And,” he added, glancing at the drying crust flaking off of Garrett’s boots, “I am going to guess that you do, as well.”

Garrett screwed up his face, mouth twisting to say that no, he didn’t, he had a home to go back to, but the words died halfway out of his mouth. He hunched deeper into his father’s jacket and swallowed heavily before he nodded. “Only for tonight,” he muttered into the collar. “They’ll- they’ll worry.” He looked away from the arch of Fenris’s brows and down towards his hands, finding it easier to follow the tracery of thin scarring up Fenris’s fingers than to try to guess at what he was thinking.

Thankfully, Fenris chose not to comment, and instead led them both farther into the alley, which twisted around before finally opening up into a street that Garrett wasn’t familiar with. Fenris had already moved on during the few, brief moments Garrett had spent looking around, and he had to hurry to catch up, quickstepping past line after line of boarded up houses. “Don’t slow down,” Fenris said without turning around.

Garrett furrowed his brow, frowning, and opened his mouth, only to close it when Fenris jerked his head to the side. Apprehension climbed its way up his throat. Garrett hunched his shoulders up towards his ears and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, reaching for the comforting presence of the photograph and his link of chain. Only once he felt their textures against his skin did he look away from the line of Fenris’s back and towards the tall shapes that separated themselves from the shadowed doorways of the buildings they passed and closed in behind them. He averted his gaze quickly back towards Fenris, who had neither sped up or slowed down, and tried to match his rapid gasps of his breath to his steps. “Where,” he asked after long seconds passed by with no sign of either of them dropping down dead, “are we going?”

“You’re smart Hawke,” Fenris told him, sidestepping around a pile of furniture that had been abandoned to moulder in the street. “Figure it out.”

Garrett sucked in on his cheek, fent the muscles in it twitch. “We’re in the abandoned district. Qunari territory.”

“You’re wasted in detention,” Fenris said in the same lazy drawl in which he said everything. Garrett had to concentrate very hard on the objects in his hand to keep speaking. He could feel words slipping away from him.

“Why?”

Fenris actually looked back at that, either because he’d heard the strain in his voice, or because he wanted to keep an eye on the people behind them, but he did drop back a few steps to keep pace with him. “Breathe,” Fenris said quietly. “We’re safer here than most places in the city.” Garrett nodded wordlessly. He didn’t exactly believe him, but he didn’t have very many options right now. “You’re going to have to decide whether to trust me or not,” Fenris went on. “And quickly.”

Garrett had been watching Fenris instead of where they were going, and reluctantly tore his eyes away at that. The buildings had fallen away behind them, opening up into a square filled with qunari, or at least, he assumed they were. Most of those present had the horns and the build that was spoken of in the official propaganda littering the streets, but then he also saw elves and humans and even the occasional dwarf walking about wearing the same painted markings. The uncertainty flavoring his unease didn’t taste any better than his alarm had earlier, and he looked to Fenris to gauge what to do.

He found Fenris engaged in quiet conversation with a thickly muscled man whose spiraling horns cast shadows across his starkly angular face, and crept closer in time to catch several words he didn’t understand before Fenris gestured to him. “We must empty our pockets,” Fenris told him. “No one goes in to see the arishok until they do.” Garrett hung back, watching Fenris take his hands out his pockets and start to remove a set of brass knuckles that Garrett hadn’t noticed he was wearing before, hadn’t thought to look for, before taking out an old cd player and headphones and turning his pockets inside out to show that they were empty.

Then they both turned to Garrett. He fidgeted, but seeing little other option, he emptied all of his pockets. Out came his wallet, a faded photograph, a short link of chain, a bent stick of gum, a travel usb, and his phone. He'd almost forgotten about that, and wished he'd thought to check who had called him before the qunari swept it all into a metal lockbox and out of sight.

Fenris motioned Garrett forward, and led the way through the thickest part of the crowd. Garrett had to force himself to move, though every step made his throat close up tight around a high pitched noise he could feel bubbling up, despite his every effort to force it down. He could feel it fighting to come out with every step, climbing higher and higher in pitch until he thought he would drown in it. Gritting his teeth hard enough his jaw ached, he quickened his pace until he was just behind Fenris as the elf led them up to a short set of stairs.

Seated on a twisted wreck of wood at the top was a man with grey skin who Garrett would have called large if it hadn’t been for the two men standing on either side of him, who Garrett had taken for statues at first, until they moved. He tried not to visibly flinch as the man who he supposed was the arishok leaned forward to brace a clawed hand on his knee. Garrett tried to focus on the metal decorating the large horns curving back and away the white hair they sprouted from. The arishok started to speak to Fenris in the same language Fenris had used earlier with the man at the entrance, and Fenris responded in kind. He didn’t understand a lick of it, except for what he thought might be his name.

Finally, the arishok turned to him. “Tell me, Hawke,” he said. “Why should I grant you asylum from your own people? Why are you important.”

Garrett swallowed back the thick knot in his throat, wishing he was home, but not the place he now lived. His real home. “I’m not,” he said, with some effort. “I am…” He looked briefly at the arishok’s face and then away. “I don’t know why I’m here instead of someone else. Someone. Better.”

There was a silence. “You judge yourself a failure, then. How could I do otherwise.”

Garrett shrugged helplessly. “The only thing I-” He stopped, clenching his eyes shut around the wild noise that nearly made him chose, only continuing once he was certain his voice wouldn’t shake. “The only thing I can say is that I’m still here.” He clenched his hands into white knuckled fists. “Not everyone is.”

“True enough,” the arishok said, though it was impossible to say whether he approved or not. Then, “What do you intend to do once you leave here, I wonder. Go back to hiding, like the rest of your kind?”

“What about you?” Garrett said without thinking about it, then winced, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop. “Why haven’t you left?”

There was a brief silence, and Garrett looked up, only to freeze when he saw the arishok had risen to his feet and was making his way down the stairs towards him. “I,” the arishok said in a voice so low he almost couldn’t make it out at all, “remain because I must. Because it is my duty. Because it would fall to another if I left, and that is unacceptable.” Garrett was breathing harshly through his nose, though he glared when the arishok took hold of his chin and forced him to look up, his eyes settling between the arishok’s nose. “You have no such duty, do you.”

“My family,” Garrett rasped. “I’m here for them.”

The arishok’s mouth twisted up at the corners. “So you have a use after all.” He stepped back then, releasing Garrett, who had started to shiver as the arishok spoke swiftly to Fenris, who bowed his head before stepping closer to Garrett.

“He said we can stay.”

“Sounded like he said a lot more than that.” Garrett didn’t look up, didn’t look anywhere but at his feet as Fenris grunted something noncommittal and led them over to a comparatively quiet corner of the square. Once there, Garrett hunched down with his knees drawn up to his chest, and covered his head with his arms.

“We will remain here for a while,” Fenris told him, then, when Garrett made a quiet, despairing noise, paused before starting to hum. Garrett was surprised at first, then gratefully let himself focus on the wandering notes to the exclusion of all else, until the shudders traveling up and down his spine quieted.


	8. Chapter 8

Time passed like a kidney stone.

Garrett tried to force himself still, when all he wanted to do was walk, was run, was tear down the walls of this space and break them, in hopes that the shock of sound would wake him up. Sitting still for so long ground on his nerves like sandpaper on silk, leaving him frayed and shaking on the verge of. Something.

His hand went automatically to his pocket only to remember, too late, that his things were gone. Garrett bit sharply at his lower lip until the bright pinprick of pain smothered some of the building in his chest. Not nearly enough to stop the urge to smack his thigh, and then again, his panted breath rasping in his ears. Focus, he told himself harshly, almost as Fenris murmured something he didn't quite catch, except the last word.

Still.

Be still.

You'd think he would have remembered what had long been the rule of his life. To make himself small, unnoticed. Some inner, voiceless certainty that any kind of attention would be the bad kind that had saved him from more than one bad encounter with-

Garrett shook his head, whether at Fenris or himself, and tried to focus on something, anything else. Looked past the tops of the walls to the faint blue tinge of sky visible through the thick smoke from the factory district.

_‘What do you think they make there?’_

In his memory, the piping voice was layered over with cracks that wouldn't come for years yet, and he made what could almost be a half smile, lips moving soundlessly as he mouthed, _‘What do you think they make?’_

 _‘Something to protect us._ ’ Garrett's smile, such as it was, faded. _‘Something that will make everything better.’_

Garrett only gradually became aware of the choked noise straining through his teeth. He stopped, but the tightness in his chest only got worse. He wanted his picture back. Started to stand to get it when Fenris lifted a hand that stopped just shy of touching him. Garrett froze at the movement. “Peace, Hawke.” Fenris’s voice was pitched low. He couldn't think of why, just then, and he wasn't grateful.

He started to respond with something thoughtless, but reigned himself in, as he always did. Swallowed down the bitter taste that say heavy on his tongue and looked away. “What would you do, if someone told you ‘peace’?”

Fenris made a strange sound. He didn't look over to see his expression. His imagination more than filled in the details. “If it happened a few years ago… Nothing.”

“How about now.”

“Depends on how punchable their face is,” Fenris said, and despite himself, Garrett cracked a smile.

“Very,” he said, finally looking over to see a matching smile. Fenris had perfectly white, even teeth, Garrett noticed. Nobody in Kirkwall had teeth like that except the very rich or the very skillful liars. He wondered which Fenris was.

“I don't know,” Fenris drawled with a smirk and a soft snort of a laugh. “You don't look too bad to me.”

For a moment, Garrett didn't, couldn't process it. And then he did. He nearly choked on air, and stood abruptly, hands fisting in the hem of his jacket. Fenris watched with interest as he went red. Garrett couldn't read his expression any more than he could at the best of times, and hastily tried to change the subject. “So, you um. Help maleficars.”

Fenris didn't raise even one eyebrow, but he may as well have. “So they say,” he said after a pause that was far too lengthy for his comfort.

“What do you say.”

Fenris flicked his eyes down and off to the side, and gave a shrug. “It doesn't really matter what I say.”

“Bullshit,” Garrett heard himself say, and had to imagine that he looked just as surprised as Fenris. Not wanting to sound angry and provoke a similar response, he hastened to add, “It always matters.”

Fenris hummed but didn't seem to have anything more to add, because he went quiet again, leaving Garrett to pace and chew on the inside of his cheek.

Distantly, he could hear the loudspeakers giving the hourly report, and tried to listen without much success. He thought there might have been something about templars, but then, there always was.

Fenris was saying something. Garrett turned with a guilty start. “What?”

“What exactly were you planning on telling your relations about where you have been?”

Garrett almost laughed. Holding it back felt like swallowing down ground glass. “Nothing.” It came out flat, but then, almost everything he said did.

“I see.” Garrett turned the corner on his heel and paced back the other direction. “Is that a benefit, or a drawback.”

This time, Garrett did laugh. “Both. Neither. I don't know.”

Fenris pushed himself to his feet and stood beside him, shoving his hands in the center pocket of his sweatshirt. “Let me know if you ever figure it out,” Fenris said. “I’d like to know, for my own benefit.”

Garrett furrowed his brows, puzzled over what that was supposed to mean, but let it go. “How about you,” he said instead. “Anybody who would worry about you?”

Fenris shrugged again, hunching into his jacket. “No. Not like- no.”

Garrett started to reach out, but reflexively pulled his hand back before it got very far, tightening his hand hard in the hopes that it would serve as a reminder. ‘Don't let them know,’ his mother whispered, and Garrett flinched as if she'd been standing beside him. “Nothing to worry about then,” he said, too loudly, trying to drown out the sudden urge to reassure a boy that could and probably (definitely) hurt him if given the chance. “City could fall down, and.” He trailed off, unsure of what to say or how to say it, knowing only that he wanted to see Fenris smile again.

In any case, it worked. Fenris peered out of the folds of his hood. “And what.”

Garrett huffed. “Don't know. Didn't think that far ahead.” No more than he assumed his father had, he thought, and that in turn made him wish with a desperation that hurt more every day that he didn't have to assume.

Fenris snorted. Garrett wasn't sure how to take that, but when he looked at Fenris’s face, there was a ghost of a smile chasing itself across his face. It made him look less tired. “Typical,” he said, but there was something lilting in his voice that made Garrett relax just a bit, just enough that he didn't quite jump when Fenris brushed his fingertips against his forearm.

“Come on,” he said, and at a look from Garrett, he added, “There's someone I need to speak to.”

Not seeing any reason not to, Garrett fell into step beside Fenris, following him to one of the apartment buildings just off the main thoroughfare of the abandoned district. The foyer was immaculately clean, far more than he would have expected, and Garrett looked around him curiously as they started to climb the staircase that climbed the walls. Every inch of available wall space was covered with red symbols, layered on top of each other to form overlapping patterns that made him dizzy to look at.

He tore his eyes away from the writing when Fenris stepped through a door halfway up, and into a hall similarly decorated. Music filtered through the walls, as well as the familiar, if muffled, voices of the state radio programs. He trailed after Fenris, distracting himself from the anxiety of being in an unfamiliar, enclosed space by trying to focus on the program. What he could make out seemed to be something about an update on today’s crimes against the state. The list got bigger every day.

Fenris stopped at a doorway. He didn't knock, just let himself in. Garrett followed after him hesitantly. The apartment inside had sparse furniture, but was richly decorated. Garrett looked around himself, frowning, as Fenris greeted a large, brown skinned qunari man, clasping him on the forearms and murmuring to him in a language Garrett didn't know. “Hawke,” Fenris said, pulling back, “this is Ashaad.”

Garrett stretched his mouth in a smile as Ashaad stretched out a hand. Garrett couldn't help but notice that Ashaad’s claws were blunted, and said so. Ashaad let out a rumbling noise that Garrett only belatedly realized was probably supposed to be a laugh. “Treat it as a metaphor,” Ashaad said, in a smooth, rolling voice that was high pitches than he'd expected.

“For what?”

Ashaad smiled, looking away towards Fenris and speaking to him in that language again. Fenris’s eyes crinkled. “No,” he said, and looked to Garrett. “Probably best you don't think on it too much. Learn from my mistakes.”

Garrett frowned and started to ask another question when he heard a sound from the next room and turned to see a young man he recognized from Anders’s clinic, Seamus, stepping out of what had to be the bedroom, tugging a shirt into place. The two of them made eye contact. Garrett looked away first, pinching his mouth shut with his fingers. Anxiety roared in his gut, along with a slew of questions he didn't want to ask.

He didn't want to know. He wanted to sleep in his own bed with his own problems and his own worries and die his own death, but it was increasingly becoming clear that that would not be the case for much longer. “I want to go,” he said. “Now. Right now.”


	9. Chapter 9

“It is, of course, your choice,” Fenris told Garrett after another one of the pauses he was beginning to expect from him, shifting to stand closer to Garrett. Garrett tried and failed to stifle the sigh of relief that brought his shoulders down somewhat from their stiffened angles, and risked shooting Fenris a small smile, one that faded when Fenris looked away almost at once. “I will, however,” Fenris told him, “advise that you consider your options.”

Garrett swallowed back the sharp rise of fear fluttering in his throat. He didn't want to consider anything. He wanted to go. But Fenris was the only one who knew what he was doing, and if he was unwilling to leave, that left very few options on how to proceed without him, most of them bad.

He was even less willing to consider the sharp tang of betrayal that sat heavy on his tongue, and hunched back against the wall, hugging his arms tightly to his chest. “What options,” he asked dully, because it was expected of him.

“You can run,” Fenris said, and at any other time Garrett would have found the careful, almost deliberate lingering over the words odd, even for his companion. “That is always a choice available to you. However…” Another pause, and this time Garrett was fairly sure Fenris was doing it for effect, “If you will excuse the expression, running will only take you so far. Eventually, you will reach a barrier.”

“What's option B.”

“Run in the other direction.” It was the qunari, Ashaad. Garrett looked up, startled, to catch a quick, blink and you miss it quirk of a smile that made Ashaad’s dark eyes glitter.

“What good will that do,” Garrett muttered, his face twisting in remembered pain as his fingers dug into his elbows. His jacket blunted most of the sensation, but there was still just enough of it that he could almost imagine he heard panicked breathing and the distant drip of water.

“It could inspire a generation.” It was Seamus this time. Garrett huffed out a disbelieving laugh that wavered on the edge of dissolving into something else.

“Don't know if you've noticed,” he told his shoes, “but Kirkwall’s been a bit short of inspiration these days.”

“Maybe you've just been paying attention to the wrong places.” He didn't know who said it. Tried to tell himself he didn't care, but he did. That was the problem. It had always been the problem. Maybe if he hadn't cared so much, he would still have a little brother instead of a press release dated six months prior, informing the members of the household that-

Garrett sucked in a shuddering, panted breath through his nose and turned to slap an open hand against the wall. “It doesn't matter!” He didn't know who he was saying it to, if anyone. “Whatever you've brought me here to- it's not going to work. It never works.”

“Hawke.” Fenris. Garrett’s fingers dug into crumbling plaster. “I told you that you would have to decide if you trusted me.”

Garrett hissed out a word that would have made his mother sputter and his father laugh and laugh and pulled his hand back to slap the wall for a second time, raising a cloud of dust, then again at the sound of Fenris’s approach. It wasn't fair, he wanted to cry, to scream, to whirl around and hit something until his knuckles bled and the sounds in his ears that weren't sounds weren't so close. He didn't want this. He wanted to be back in the comfortable discomfort of his tiny room in his tiny life and forget. That was what he was good at. Or bad at.

“Have you decided.”

The worst.

“No.” His lip hurt. He only distantly realized he'd been biting it, and stopped. “Yes.” Reluctantly, he turned his head. Fenris was closer than he'd expected, and he winced, bloody lips peeling back from his teeth in a grimace before he let his head drop. “Why couldn't you have left me alone.”

Fenris made another one of those strange noises. When Garrett looked up, he caught the barest glimpse of a twist to Fenris’s mouth that accompanied a twitch of the jaw muscles. “If it helps,” Fenris said evenly, “you can hate me. Hate will give you the focus to put one foot in front of the other.”

Garrett was not in the appropriate frame of mind to appreciate this nugget of wisdom, and told him so as best he knew how, in explicit detail and with accompanying hand motions. He hadn't expected to feel better afterwards, but when Fenris’s careworn face cracked apart into a surprised smile as he barked out what he thought might be the first genuine laugh he'd heard out of the elf yet, Garrett found that he did.

There was a tingling in his cheeks that he just barely resisted the urge to touch. Turned instead to brace himself against the wall just beside the distinctly hand shaped mark he'd made in the plaster and looked at Fenris, eyes focusing somewhere between Fenris’s nose and the lowermost raised scars on his forehead. “So. Assume I do. What's the point of being here, now.”

“I can help you with that,” Seamus told him. He had a soft smile and plain clothes that nonetheless probably cost more than everything Garrett owned. “This used to be a safe house, for… all kinds of things, going back decades.”

Despite himself, Garrett was intrigued. “But Kirkwall’s only been under control of the chantry for-”

“About ten years, yes. But Kirkwall has always chafed under the whims of its rulers. Rum running, some years, the mage underground others,” he added almost nonchalantly, as if he didn't speak of heresy, treason. Anyone convicted of helping mages, maleficars, was a criminal in the eyes of the chantry, like Fenris. And, he supposed now, himself, if the chantry got wind of his actions.

Garrett’s mouth had gone dry, and he dragged a hand down his face. “What is it now?”

“Right now, it is a meeting place far from the eyes of the chantry. What else does it need to be?”

Garrett made a sour face. He barely resisted the urge to stomp his foot. “A place with answers, would be helpful.”

Fenris made that raspy imitation of a laugh again, and started to pace about the length of the room. Almost unwillingly, Garrett found his eyes irresistibly drawn after him. “I found this place when I first arrived here,” Fenris said. “It was cold. Snowing. And this place was long since abandoned, so.” He shrugged. “I let myself in. Found a number of people already living here, who reminded me of…” A pause, shorter than the others, and he added softly, “Friends, lost to me.”

“What sort of friends?” Garrett asked, and Fenris gave a start, almost as if he'd forgotten Garrett was there. He pulled back just slightly, hands drawing tighter to his chest.

“The sort that would have wanted. This.”

Garrett would have asked more, wanted to, but hung back, looked instead to Seamus and Ashaad. “This isn't me saying yes,” he told them. It seemed very important that they know that. “Whatever you want, I'm not saying it.”

“Of course,” Ashaad told him, and Garrett would have probably taken offense at how he said it if it weren't for the way that Seamus’s pinkie finger had curled around Ashaad’s, and he looked away, feeling that profound sense of discomfort he always felt at intruding on private things. Meaningful things.

“So don't go getting any ideas.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” Seamus said warmly.

“I mean it.”


	10. Chapter 10

Garrett very deliberately did not hunch in on himself as he followed Fenris out of the apartment some hours later, though he could not do anything to help his awkward gait, too fast and too precise by half. He tried not to glance sidelong at Fenris as he walked, instead gnawed at his lower lip for a few moments before he blurted out, "So. What do I do. In the resistance. Thing. Plants bombs? Make pamphlets?"

Fenris's step faltered, throwing off his stride for a few seconds as he lifted a hand to his face. Garrett couldn't tell if the noise he made was one of exasperation or not, and toyed with the photograph he had reclaimed from the doorman on their way out of the conclave. "No," Fenris said at length. None of that. No."

"Then what do I do?" Frustration made his jaw ache. "Why even- why do any of this, if you won't let me help?"

"We will," Fenris said from behind his hand. When he lowered it, his face was as inscrutable as ever. "Soon. But you have to work you way up."

"From what? To what?"

Fenris turned his head the other way, and murmured something he couldn't make out. When Garrett asked him again, louder, Fenris sighed. "What we are doing is very dangerous," he said slowly. "For all of us. Trust does not come lightly, if at all."

Garrett's mouth opened and shut as he followed Fenris through the borders of the flooded district, leaving high water marks and empty streets behind them as they returned to colors and noise and far, far too much of both. " _You_ wanted me," he tried to say in the same sort of tone of voice his father had used when trying to talk someone over, but he knew he had failed when bright green eyes turned to him only briefly before dropping away. "I didn't- this isn't what I wanted," he said plaintively, to Fenris, to no one at all. 

"It is not what any of us wanted," Fenris said heavily, then stopped in place, holding out a hand when Garrett made to reply. "Your home is just ahead," he told Garrett. "Gather what you need. All of it. You will not be coming back. Meet me at the end of the street, near the market." And with that, he hurried away before Garrett had time to ask him how he had known where Gamlen's hovel was.

Garrett stood awkwardly in the trash filled alleyway for some time, face twisting as he tried to sort through thoughts that would not be sorted. Eventually, he gave up and climbed the stairs the Gamlen shared with the families that lived on the second story of their building, and tried the door. It wasn't locked. Unease twisted a coil in his belly, but he made himself step inside. It looked exactly the same as it had the last time it was here, down to the red zero flashing at him from the answering machine. He averted his gaze, down to the array of new and exciting trash spread across the floor, and took a breath, then another, before taking another step. Then another.

At first, he thought no one was home, but then his mother stepped out from behind the curtain separating her room from the main one. He flinched at her stiff body language and took a step back. His fingers started to flick and flutter at his side without his telling them to, which earned him a displeased noise from his mother that went straight to his hindbrain, and only made his flapping speed up until Leandra closed the distance between them in three quick strides and seized his hands. It took everything he had not to physically recoil, but he could not quite muffle a thin noise of distress between his teeth. "Stop." She wasn't yelling, hadn't raised her voice, but Garrett stopped. "What have you been doing? You know its your job to take care of the house while I'm out, but every day I come home and the place is a pigsty. What sort of message do you think that sends to me?" It took Garrett a moment to sift through the instantaneous guilt enough to parse what else she had said, to understand that she hadn't realized that he hadn't been home at all, and his throat closed up tight. 

"'m sorry," he told his feet, and she sighed.

"Don't look at me like that. Do not. You make it sound like I'm oppressing you. I only ask that you earn your keep. We don't have your father to rely on anymore, and we all have to pitch in." Her mouth was a thin line, and Garrett tried not to look at it, looked instead at the cracks between the floorboards where he could see dirt. In the wet season, it turned to mud. He kept right on staring at what he thought might be a dead rat tangled in the dried mud as she sighed. "Garrett. please. Look at me."

He reluctantly lifted his eyes. He started to automatically look somewhere in the general area of her nose, but even as she opened her mouth, he quickly shifted to look her in the eye. He could already feel the muscles in his back tightening up from discomfort, but he didn't look away as she lifted a hand to brush a thick twist of flyaway hair behind his ear. "I just worry about you. What are you going to do when I'm gone? You can't expect to reply on family to fix your mistakes your whole life, like with the viscount, can you?"

"Don't worry," he heard himself say faintly, then, stronger, "Its fine. I- I got a job."

"You did?" His mother sounded overjoyed, and it took everything he had not to let his eyes drop. "Oh, Garrett, that's wonderful! What are you doing?"

His brain stuttered for a second, turning over and over without results. He hadn't actually thought that far. "Uhm, I. Pamphlets," he said at last, seizing desperately on that scrap of memory. "H-handing out pamphlets. Its important," he added, because he felt he should, and was rewarded with a laugh and a kiss on the forehead.

"It is! Oh, it is! When are you doing that?"

"R-right now," he said, trying to summon up a smile. It felt stiff and unnatural on his face, as it often did, but his mother did not appear to notice. She was still smiling, but something had changed in her expression, and he smiled wider, warily, hoping to dispel whatever might be coming. "Just here to pick up a few things."

"Well, I suppose that's fine," she said in a tone that he thought might be her way of saying no, it really wasn't, before going on to say, "just so long as you don't forget your duties here, or at school." She added that last one almost as an afterthought, but he couldn't really blame her. For the people in Kirkwall, school was a twisted mockery of normalcy they followed through with because they had to. Because otherwise, you would get templars knocking on your door. And to a templar, every secret was magic. And they _would_ find them.

He sketched a smile that lost a bit of its edge to relief when she at last released his hands and turned away. She was saying something, but now that she was no longer looking at him it was hard to understand. He tried his best for a few seconds, but once it became clear that no input from him was needed, he moved to the room he had used to share with the twins. The large double bed was half covered with laundry and debris from his mother and uncle's lives, but he managed to pick through it for what he needed. Backpack first, a heavy duffel bag that used to belong to his father. Faded patches in the shape of flowers and suns barely clung on by a few stray threads, and he took a moment to brush his fingers over them before he returned to his work. In it went what few small toys he'd managed to hide away that had used to belong to the twins, along with a pair of oversized sunglasses that were too big for him. The bundle of letters he'd saved from Bethany went in next, along with the original press release about Carver. He was much more careful with them than he was with his clothes, which he grabbed at random, hastily stuffing them in without looking at them. There was so much he wanted to take with him, but so little that was his. He wavered on his feet, looking around the partitioned room with a critical eye, before eventually slumping. Anything else he'd want, of the twins' or his father's, would be in the room his mother shared with Gamlen, and he did not dare go in there. He hadn't ever, not once. 

When he at last straightened to his feet and hefted the bag, he debated somehow warning his mother and Gamlen. What if they did worry? But, he told himself, he wouldn't be able to tell them anything about it without endangering Fenris and the others. He did not count himself in that number, even though he was well aware that families of dissidents often turned them in to the chantry to avoid having suspicion coming around to land on them. They wouldn't do that. They wouldn't. All the same, he obeyed the impulse to check after himself for anything that would give himself away before he left the apartment. His mother was chatting animatedly to the neighbor's eldest as he left, which was small mercy. He didn't have to lie to her. Again.

It was some small distance to where Fenris had told him to meet, and he dug in his pocket for his phone, remembering the call he had missed. His phone was old and battle-scarred, and he carefully supported the hinges with his free hand as he flipped it open. MISSED CALLS glared at him from the screen, bathing the slack fall of his mouth in too-bright light as he read the next word. CARVER. 

Garrett had stopped dead in his tracks, staring wordlessly down at his phone. People bumped against him as they wound against him, but he barely noticed. Dread and a thrill of excitement tangled up in his chest as he frantically searched his voicemail for new messages, his hands shaking enough that he had to laboriously go through the menus three times because he pressed the buttons too many times in his haste, but then it lay open before him, displaying... nothing. There was nothing. Garrett's smile slipped. Dread was growing stronger, dragging shivery fingernails up the knobs of his spine. What did this mean? Was he okay? Alive? Or had someone gotten hold of his phone and was trying to trick him, for... He didn't know why, didn't want to even think of it, but he knew Fenris would. And Anders, and Bela, and-

He lifted away the supporting hand to grind the heel of it into his eyes until he saw stars. Tried to force his breath even, but panic still laced through his chest. He couldn't tell them, he realized. Not if he wanted to have the slightest hope of finding out if Carver was safe. If he told them, there would be discussions, and decisions, when really only one decision mattered, and he had just made it. 

There would be consequences to this, he knew that, but he shoved that thought away. It didn't matter. What mattered was his family, that he at last had found a way to make himself useful to them again. Everything else was just window dressing.

He dropped his hand, and stood blinking around at the street. The buildings on either side of him were too large, too bright as his eyes readjusted. Tattered banners with fading messages hung limply from upper balconies, half caught words in red and brown screaming at him about plagues and ghosts, but he barely noticed them. His hands flickered just slightly at his side as he hurried through the streets towards where Fenris waited for him, and for the first time in too lonng, he wondered if everything was going to be okay.


	11. Chapter 11

It was Monday, and Garrett was walking through the front doors of his school. It seemed a thousand years since he had last been here, and yet at the same time, like no time at all had passed. The air moved slowly through the halls, stifling all conversation. It was hard to breathe through the heat, staring around at the same people making the same motions, dancing a dance he had never understood. When he tried to keep up, to learn, he was too clumsy. Missed steps. And everyone saw. Everyone knew.

It was as easy as breathing to slip back into that space in his head where he always went at school or on the streets. It was just to the left of reality, far enough that things seemed to move in disjointed jerks, too fast or too slow. Sometimes it was alarming. Today, it was almost a comfort. Almost.

The first two periods flew by. Lunch was a missed heartbeat, a jerk that left him feeling a pang in his chest that left him uneasy and wondering at what he had missed.

When he next looked up, it was fifth period. The substitute teacher, who insisted on everyone calling him Lucky, paced back and forth at the front of the class. Today’s lecture seemed to be about the plagues that walked outside the Free Marches. The wars, war upon war upon ceaseless, bloody war, recounted in the same steady, impatient tones in which Lucky recited who would be that afternoon’s spotters.

Names, none of them his. He tried not to slump in relief. He had not been chosen. He watched out of the corner of his eyes as three others stood up and went into the hall. The last, he thought he recognized, and not from school, but she was gone before his eyes could settle on her face.

She wouldn’t be back. Not today. Spotters were excused from class for the afternoon, but in exchange they had to attend a showing of films. Sometimes they were informational speeches from the Revered Mother, the way there was on holidays, sometimes not. He shuffled uncomfortably, remembering how the last one he had seen had gone, his brows curling up to pinch between his eyes in the shape of a headache.

Focused entirely inwards as he was, he completely missed the first poke at his heavy jacket. When there came a second, much more insistent poke that pushed his jacket against the scar around his ribs, he nearly jumped out of his seat.

Garrett barely swallowed down a stifled shriek, eyes wild and wide. There was nobody behind him when he turned around, but there was a rustle of paper. A wad of crumpled up looseleaf fell out of a fold in his jacket when he twisted. Garrett glanced up towards the front of the classroom, but Lucky didn’t seem to have noticed, so he hastily scooped it up and opened it beneath his desk.

 _Did you watch it?_ It said. There was a sketch alongside it that he did not understand at first, until it resolved itself after a few seconds into shapes he slowly recognized as the tattoos on Merrill’s face.

Oh. Merrill. The USB.

His stomach twisted itself around itself in a knot he thought for sure would kill him, and raised his hand unsteadily. Lucky ignored it. Garrett waved it a little.

“Unless you are bleeding from the mouth or dead, Hawke,” he said without looking up from the book, “stay in your seat.”

“I have to go,” Garrett told the top of his desk.

“Eyes front, boy! Look me in the eye when you speak.”

Garrett flinched, reminded uncomfortably of many similar conversations with his mother, and reluctantly lifted his gaze to Lucky’s nose. “Can I-”

“No.”

“Sir,” said a familiar voice behind him. Isabela. “Don’t you know? The school counselor wanted to see him today. They have a meeting every week.”

Lucky squinted suspiciously in her direction. Garrett did not turn around, but he could hear her nails drum on her desk. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”

"Maybe,” Isabela said with a clear smile in her voice, “you were a little busy, Lucky.” Garrett didn’t understand why she gave that such an odd emphasis, or why lucky went red.

“Fine!” Lucky pointed a shaking hand at the door. “Fine! Get out of here before you make an even bigger disruption than you already have,” he barked at Garrett, who hurried towards the door, only to realize that he had forgotten his books. He ducked his head, flushing furiously as he scrambled back to his seat, feeling every eye on him. He hurried as fast as he could, but not before he heard scattered laughter that followed him out of the room.

The door snapped shut behind him, cutting off sound entirely. It was both easier and harder to breathe, and Garrett took a moment to suck in air until his heart wasn’t hammering quite so much.

He did not have a meeting scheduled today, or ever. He had only met the school counselor once, after Bethany and Carver. She had been a slight, slim woman, all angles and smiles above a broach in the shape of the eye. “Come see me anytime,” she had said, with that strange twang some people got when attempting at a Marcher’s accent, and had patted his hand.

He never went back.

He thought of that now, rubbing at the tingling skin of his hand as he walked deserted halls. Everything was done in muted shades of gold and red. Not the oranges and violets and shocking blues of lowtown, or the browns or the flooded district, colors he’d become too accustomed to lately, shot through with others. Paper. Yellow and white and deep red.

There was a flyer above the water fountain, same as the hundreds on thousands of others spread throughout the city, one that caught his eye as he bent to sip at the ill smelling water.

 **Keep Kirkwall Safe** , it said, above a black and white rendition of a robed figure holding fire. The picture was rough, and grainy, obviously made using wood blocks, but the shapes and the red paper almost made it seem like it could start moving. **Report Suspicious Behavior Directly To Your Local Templars. Do Not Hesitate. Hesitation Could Mean Your Family’s Lives.** Below it, was a number. Below that, was a list of addresses on tear away paper.

Garrett took one.

*****

Mother insisted on attending the chantry often, every holy day at sunrise, so the chantry itself was not unfamiliar to him. It was the stillness that got to him, almost in echo of the school. At this time of day, everyone was at work or school, but the Revered Mother spoke anyway, preaching from her elevated balcony to an almost empty chantry. Shrugging deeper into his coat, Garrett leaned into an alcove where he would be mostly unobserved and watched.

The Revered Mother shone in white and black and gold, lit up by candles and waning sunlight from the windows at her back. Flanking her on either side were two people with sunburst brands on their foreheads, who moved quietly about her during the service. From this far away, it was impossible to make out details about them, but he found himself staring at them, as he always did, searching for his father’s face in theirs.

They were not him.

Garrett slumped back into the stone bench at watched the rest of the service, unseeing. Services lasted upwards of two hours sometimes, depending on if the Revered Mother got into a fiery speech or not. Today, she did.

Her voice washed over him in waves, beating him back into his seat. On and on, relentless. He felt queasy, and squeezed his eyes shut tight until the feeling passed. He did not open them again until the service had been over for long minutes. When he opened them again, it was to silence broken only by the soft hush of skirts over stone and the flicker of candles.

There were a lot of those. Too many.

He looked away from an unlit one nearby, towards the massive statue of Andraste that dominated the central room. He couldn’t see Andraste’s eyes. He did not know if he wanted her to look towards the City or down, at him. Either possibility made him feel like spiders were crawling up his back, and he hunched deeper into his jacket, hurrying past a lay sister who murmured to the one beside her about orphans.

At Andraste’s base was a doorway. It was plain wood, reinforced with strips of metal, but he could not bear to look at it for very long. Even a glimpse of it put his back up, made his fingers curl into claws that he forced into his pocket, breathing hard, but he forced himself to keep going.

The door was lighter than he’d expected, swinging easily on oiled hinges, and he stumbled into the room on the other side, scuffing the carpet until it was rolled up onto itself. Garrett made an uphappy noise and made to fix it when a voice stopped him. “Leave it.” Garrett went still, finding it hard to breathe.

The voice had come from behind a recession built into the wall, where someone unseen could sit, entered from an unseen room. Blocking the view of them was a partition, and before that was a chair. That was all.

It was enough.

This was supposed to be anonymous, discrete, but everyone always found out who had spoken to the sisters. Most of the time, almost always, it was not someone who genuinely believed that the person they were reporting on was a maleficar. It was a neighbor or a resentful co-worker or a spurned lover who wanted to get some petty, spiteful revenge, to hold the power of life and death over someone who they thought deserved it. But, most often, it was family.

Cousins. Mothers. Sons.

And everyone found out, in the end. The worst part, he thought, was that everyone, to a person, approved. Everyone agreed that the tipster had done their duty, even if their eyes screamed when they said it.

Garrett licked his lips. “I- I have a brother,” he whispered to the partition. “He’s only ten, he-” a pause, while he gulped back a sudden wild urge to leave this room, now, to run and run and run until Kirkwall and its secret terrors disappeared behind him. “The templars took him too, when they.” He couldn’t finished that sentence, memories of the day he had returned home from school to find armored men with blank, faceless helmets filling Gamlen’s hovel like snowfall, bright and sharp and terrible to look upon, making his every breath scratch his throat raw.

There was movement behind the partition. “And you want him back?” Asked a voice he vaguely remembered belonging to a sister of the chantry. Her voice was soft, but with a thin edge like the blade of a knife. It made Garrett stiffen, trembling. “I am sorry, my dear child, but you know as well as I that he was taken for his own protection. He is much safer where he is, protected from the perversions that took that other.”

Garrett bent to press his forehead against the faded velvet armrest that ran the length of the booth, his hands clutched tight over his mouth to keep back the wordless, inarticulate noises that had threatened to come out at the word perversions. Protected. Such noises would betray him. Kill him. Or worse.

There was always worse.

“I know,” he said when he could. His voice was hoarse, a bare rasp over top of an all-body shudder. “But- sometimes the chantry gives them back, if-”

“If information is given that leads to the capture of maleficars,” the sister finished for him. He could almost see her smile, despite the opaque divider, and closed his eyes tight. “Do you have such information, boy? Speak up.”

Garrett rocked back and forth, fighting to get control back over his breathing. There was no interruption from the other side of the partition, not for long seconds, not until there came a soft sound, slow as an exhale and twice as heavy with meanings gone unsaid.

“Do not be afraid,” the sister said. “The Maker smiles upon those who seek the peace of his quenching fires. We will protect you from the retribution of maleficars. No harm will come to you.”

Garrett wondered, fleetingly, if whoever had reported his father had believed that when they heard it, then he opened his mouth. Nothing came out at first, then, “I do,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I know where a maleficar is. A group of them. Let my brother go, and I’ll tell you where they are.”


	12. Chapter 12

Fenris was waiting for him when he stepped out of the chantry, stepping out from behind one of the long fluted columns that lined the square and into his path. His stance was not aggressive, and he wasn’t moving fast, but that didn’t matter one whit to the automatic responses that shrieked in his ear and had Garrett stagger back, throwing up an arm in front of his face. His free hand had come up to cover his mouth, and clenched into white-knuckled tension as they stared at each other. His heart was hammering in his ears, and if Fenris was saying anything, he didn’t hear it. It was hard enough to tell his feet to stop, to stand still, when every instinct he had was telling him to run and run and run again.

Fenris, for his part, had taken his hands out of his pockets slow and careful, sketching a small smile. “My apologies,” he said. His eyes weren’t on Garrett’s but that was fine, because Garrett was looking mostly at his hands. “I had- I did not think.” Fenris shuffled, dropping his hands to his sides as he turned his eyes up the stairs to the chantry. “Did you find what you sought inside?”

It was a transparent attempt at changing the subject, and Garrett started to gratefully open his mouth until he remembered what his purpose inside had been. He let it close, and ducked his head off to the side with a lopsided shrug. “Lit a candle for my father,” he muttered. He could feel his cheeks darken, the way they always did when he lied, and hoped Fenris wouldn’t know him to tell the difference.

Fenris was quiet for a moment. Garrett did not look at him to gauge his expression, settled for hugging his arms to his chest and rocking on his heels in a half-hearted attempt at settling his nerves. He tried not to flinch when Fenris said, in a curious tone of voice, “Does it help, lighting these candles? What does it achieve?”

Garrett looked up at Fenris for the first time, noting the pinch to heavy brows. “I think,” Garrett said slowly, “it feels like you’ve done something. Control. You give loss a shape.”

Fenris’s mouth twisted at the corner. “And that’s… helpful? I have given my grief shape before, in bruises and in words. All that it accomplished was a need for aspirin.”

Garrett shrugged deeper into his father’s coat. The lining had used to be soft, but it was ragged now, and pulled at the old scars on his face. “Sometimes,” Garrett told Fenris’s boots. “Making it real gives you something to yell at.”

Fenris hummed to himself. Garrett was beginning to have thoughts about that hum. “So noted,” was all Fenris said for quite some time after that.

Garrett tried his best not to imagine all the possibilities held within that silence, without much success. He  found his eyes flickering towards Fenris as they walked and then away again and again, like a very small, very timid mouse scenting something interesting just around the corner. Of course, the definition of “interesting” depended on your perspective. Cats could be very interesting, for a short time, and brooms too, for that matter. The vote was out on which of two, if either, Fenris would prove to be.

At the moment, Fenris was trailing the back of his hand along the side of the buildings they passed. The fingers of his worn leather gloves had been unevenly snipped off at the first knuckle, and the leather rasped against brick. The sound made Garrett’s back teeth ache, and he bit down on his tongue to hold back the words building up. _Quiet_ , his mother said to him. In his head, his mother’s voice filled the world the way it had when he was smaller and shaking after a nightmare. _Quiet voices._

 _Don’t draw attention. Not ever_.

Garrett worried his lower lip between his teeth, biting back the need to shout. He could feel it pressing against the back of his teeth like bile, and keeping it in made his whole mouth taste bad. Wrong. He swallowed heavily, but it lingered. “Stop.”  He’d whispered it, but Fenris stopped. Stopped walking, stopped humming, just. Stopped.

He turned to look at Garrett, which was almost worse than the sound had been, but not half so bad as when Fenris asked him, “What is it? Did you see something?”

Asking because they were supposed to be quiet. Secret. Safe. Ashamed, Garrett twisted his face away, but not before he saw the nervous twitch of Fenris’s fingers. “Forget it,” Garrett said, near swallowing it down when Fenris moved closer, but it was only to fidget with the hem of his ragged sweatshirt. Fenris did not touch him, which earned a quiet sigh of relief.

“If you thought it unimportant,” Fenris told him, “you would not have said anything.”

The corner of Garrett’s mouth pulled up towards the clench of his eyes, trying his very best not to say anything, to stay quiet, but then he heard Fenris’s glove move across the fabric of his sweatshirt and he blurted out, “It’s just- its your gloves.”

Fenris paused, long enough for Garrett’s cheeks to flush from their usual soft russet brown to a ruddy heat he could feel against his fingers. “My gloves?” Garrett could not read anything into his tone. It was not angry or irritated or amused, it simply was.

“It. The noise.” Garrett was stumbling now, worse than usual. The words were getting all tangled up between his teeth and tongue, and he had to work to sort them out. At any moment, he knew, Fenris would get impatient and finish his sentence for him. He knew this because everyone did. “It makes a thin, it, I just-” Garrett made a small, reedy noise of misery and hunched in on himself, hugging his elbows tight. “I know it doesn’t, does not make sense, and, and I just-”

Fenris watched him. He had started to move at first, only to stop when Garrett started, and now he watched, the bright green of his eyes piercing in the low light. “Garrett,” he said at last, after Garrett had fallen silent for five long seconds, an agonizing eternity. “You do not like the gloves. The gloves will be gone. That makes sense.” Garrett could not begin to process what had been said at first. He started to speak, stopped, and lifted wide, shocked eyes when Fenris began to remove his gloves. It was a simple enough thing to Fenris, but to Garrett, it was as impossible a thing as a snowstorm in summer. “The gloves are not important,” Fenris said in response to his look as he tucked the gloves away in the center pocket of his sweatshirt. “You are.”

Garrett could not manage to form the words to shape around it, this strange thing that Fenris had done, and continued to stare as they resumed walking. This time, when Fenris turned his head to look at him, Garrett did not look away. “It is a skill,” Fenris said to him as they passed beyond the part of the city that had maintained sewers and into the part where long boards crisscrossed ditches filled with stink. Garrett barely looked down, too transfixed by what Fenris was saying. “It takes practice.”

“What does?”

“Expecting respect.”

Garrett frowned, bewildered, but Fenris had looked away again before he could speak, dipping his head to duck beneath where a section of the neighboring building had come crashing down into the street. The chantry did not put forth even a show of effort into maintaining things once you moved past Lowtown, and such obstacles cropped up more and more often as they navigated the great grey area between districts.

They gave Garrett an excuse for his silence, one that grew more and more resentful with every step. As they walked, and he had time to think about it, Garrett actually found himself growing angry. Ordinarily, he would have pushed it away, but Fenris had implied a lot with what he had said, things that Garrett wasn’t comfortable with dwelling on. Of course he was respected, he always had been. He was important, he mother said so. He had responsibilities for keeping the house running. And implying otherwise was… not something he wanted to think about.

He did not have time to put words to put to his anger, however, before they arrived at one of what Fenris had told him was any number of safe houses. Like the one in the qunari compound, this one was crumbling and smelled like mold, but once they were past the door and its warning about being condemned, it was actually quite clean. The floors were freshly scrubbed, and there were even flowers on a table. Wilted, of course, but everything was, in this city.

There was movement on the floor above as they topped the latest in an endless flight of stairs, and Garrett lifted his eyes to a balcony that circled the perimeter of the room to see a familiar head of sandy blond hair, shot through with dark roots.

“There you are,” Anders smiled, crinkling soft eyes Garrett knew to be the color of warm honey. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“We?” Garrett asked, drawing out the last note until Anders laughed.

“Justice and I,” he clarified, smiling, and despite his anger Garrett couldn’t help but smile back. Anders had been his first friend in this city, before Varric even, and he didn’t have it in his heart to look at that smile and not feel it change something behind his ribs. “He’s been worried about you,” Anders added, reaching out to rub his hands through Garrett’s hair. Knowing it to be a shaggy mess, Garrett ducked away, swatting at his hands with a snort of a laugh that felt like fizzing soda in his nose.

“Because of my hair?” Garrett asked with one of those shy smiles reserved just for Anders and Justice, his eyes crinkling when Anders’s did.

“Yes,” Anders agreed, and ruffled his hair again for good measure. “Justice can always tell when your routine changes.”

Garrett blinked, then looked away and pulled his lips into his mouth. He jumped when his eyes landed on Fenris where he’d settled himself back against a wall. He’d almost forgotten Fenris was there, and he felt guilty for a second until he remembered that he was supposed to be mad at him. It was irrational, he knew it was, but there was still a measure of spiteful satisfaction when Fenris averted his eyes as Anders followed the direction of Garrett’s gaze.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Fenris said, either in answer to Anders or Justice or Garrett himself. “You were discussing very important topics.”

“Don’t do that, Fenris,” Anders sighed, lifting a hand to scrub at the back of his neck.

“Do what.”

“That. That thing you do when you have things to say that you are deliberately not saying.”

Fenris was smiling, if only a bit, but Garrett had no way of knowing if it was a happy one. And, despite himself, he wanted it to be. “My thoughts are my own, just like yours. Say what you wanted us here to say, and I will be gone.”

Anders shifted his weight to his back foot and crossed his arms across his chest, leveling a look at Fenris that was met with half lidded eyes and silence. “All right, all right,” Anders cried, turning sharply on his heels to almost leap up the next flight of stairs. “Have it your way!” He called back down, but he was laughing as he said it, which earned a soft sound from Fenris. It sounded halfway between a chuckle and a groan, but by the time Garrett turned his head to look back at him, Fenris’s face as unreadable as ever.

“After you,” Fenris told him, gesturing with a strange twirl of the hand towards the stairs. It almost reminded him of one of the fancy serving men in old films, and he puzzled over it briefly as he climbed the stairs before dismissing it as Fenris being Fenris. He had his ways, his own strangeness, and Garrett had long since learned not to question such things.

He followed Anders and Justice into the second room on the top floor. Inside, everything was white --white embroidered furniture, white rug, white piano in the corner covered with an untidy pile of white sheets-- except for the crumbled brown leaves lining the walls. Everything looked old, but expensive, and Garrett gingerly made his way through the room, wincing at every footprint he left in the rug as Anders sat on the piano bench. Fenris, coming in behind them, seemed content to stand just inside the shadow of the door, tugging at Garrett’s attention every time he moved.

He tried to put it out of his mind as he made himself comfortable where he perched on a lowslung armchair, his hands hanging between his knees to brush against the fur capping his boots. It was soft, and he tangled his fingers in it as he pretended to study the floorboards. “So what do you want me to do?” He asked when it became obvious they were waiting for him to speak.

“Have you heard of the mage underground?” Anders asked him, leaning forward to clasp his fingers together tight.

Garrett eyed his hands warily, but nodded. “Yeah. Everyone has,” he added, when Anders made a noise he eventually realized was supposed to make him continue. He shrugged, uncertainty making his shoulders climb towards his ears. “It’s. It’s the underground. It helps maleficar.”

Anders tugged at his mouth with a hand that looked golden-brown in the light filtering through faded curtains, making Garrett fall quiet. “Never mind that,” Anders said, waving the word away like an irritating cloud of smoke. “Semantics. The point is, yes. It helps those unfortunate enough to be accused of practicing illegal magic to get out of the city.”

That gave Garrett pause. “How?” There was an eagerness to his tone that made Fenris look up sharply, at his back. “How do they get out? I thought nobody could leave, the templars-”

“There are ways,” Anders said, watching him with a slight smile. “They can’t watch every street, every inlet of the port. The fact is, more people escape this city every year than they’d ever want you to know. It is in the chantry’s best interests to cover it up, but it does happen.”

Thoughts were getting scrambled in Garrett’s head, but several words leaped out at him, and he had to swallow hard to fight back the urge to ask him if it could happen, then when, and who, and when. An anxious energy flitted between the soft flapping of his fingers. “Anders,” he started slowly, are you-”

If Garrett hadn’t known better, he’d think that the sliver of white bisecting Anders’s left eye looked blue when he suddenly leaped to his feet. Garrett leaned back, but only slightly, because the change in body language was familiar enough that he was not scared when he looked into Anders’s eyes and saw someone else looking back. No. It was not that which scared him, but the words.

“We can help you get your sister out of the gallows, Hawke.” It was Justice who spoke, and he tried his best not to let his building anxiety show in his hands, though he had no way of knowing if he succeeded.

“How do you know about my sister,” he said, out of several options, none of which were good.

“Hawke.” He turned reluctantly to look at Fenris, whose face was half hidden behind the drape of his hood. “Why do you think we picked you?”

Justice, or maybe Anders, made a noise behind him, but Garrett could only think of what he had overheard the first time he had attended one of these meetings, about being Malcolm Hawke’s child. They were lying to him. Again. “You-” He jerked his head to look at Justice, who met his expression with grim silence. “You didn’t pick me because of me. You picked me because I was- what? Useful to you?”

“That’s what we all are,” Fenris said at his back, and Garrett felt all of his earlier anger come rushing back. “All of us were chosen for a reason. We knew you would do anything to get her back. I had just h-”

“You what?” Garrett snapped, whirling back around. “You wanted me to fall into line? Like you?” Garrett regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth when he saw Fenris so stiff and tense, but he couldn’t get them back, and that pull was still behind his teeth, fear and a newfound sense of betrayal making him say, “I’m not you. I need something real.”

Fenris’s mouth worked, and for a moment Garrett thought he would say something, wanted him to. But Fenris did not. Fenris only dropped his eyes away in that way that Garrett was beginning to find troubling, somewhere in the back of his head, and left the room without a word.

“Leave it,” Anders or maybe Justice said when he started after him. “Give him his space. He’ll be back, sooner than you expect. Come, talk with me. We have a lot to discuss.”

Garrett stared through the empty doorway for long seconds before he reluctantly tore his eyes away, stepping back into a space that felt all the more empty without a pair of watchful green eyes.


	13. Chapter 13

It was easy enough to fill the next few hours, or so he assumed. Garrett didn't actually remember what he'd done. It was all somewhat of a blur, and if he was to be honest, he didn't really want to remember. It was easier to let it fade away, the same way so many days had, into a soft outline of streets and people that would be gone entirely by the next day.

When things finally settled into something approaching something had texture and weight, it was approaching curfew. The streetlights weren't on yet, but his shadow stretched away in front of him in a way that put him in mind of another day, an older day, and he quickly turned away from it to take in his surroundings.

Looking around at the bright paint and carvings decorating the buildings on either side of him, Garrett very quickly realized that he was in an area of town he didn't recognize. He drew in a swift, panted breath through his nose, then another, panic a sharp lance stabbing between his ribs so that every breath was in anticipation of pain.

He staggered back a step, reaching out blindly for balance. His other hand was already diving into his pocket for his photo, the only photo that mattered. He found it, exactly where it was supposed to be, but on this occasion, the smooth plastic beneath his fingers wasn't enough to banish the facts. The fact that he was lost. The fact that he would soon be out on the streets after dark, a time when any citizen caught out on the streets would be subject to questioning. The fact that he didn't remember where Anders had told him to meet tonight.

All of those things meant danger, not just for him, and Garrett nearly fell back against the crumbling wall at his side. He knew he had to move, that it would be easier to think if he was somewhere off the main thoroughfare, but knowing that only added to the lead weights rooting him to the spot. His feet seemed to weigh ten pounds each, his ribs twenty, and he turned his face into the brick to try to block it out.

He had no way of knowing how long he stood like like before a noise that had been hovering at the edge of his awareness resolved itself into someone talking to him, saying his name. With an effort, Garrett dragged his eyes towards the sound.

It was Merrill. Her distinctive facial tattoos were hard to miss. Her face was pinched, and she was turned to block his view of the street, or maybe the street from him. He had to concentrate to make out what she was saying. He nearly sagged with relief when he finally heard, “-ome with me, come on, let's get you safe.”

He followed her without question. Words were hard to grasp right now, and he was grateful to be able to allow someone else the responsibility of the heavy lifting where that was concerned. She certainly didn't seem to mind doing the lion’s share. He couldn't follow most of it, but it was a pleasant sounding, soothing background noise that did a respectable job at distracting him.

Merrill seemed to know where she was going, leading him through the winding streets without hesitation. The buildings here were pressed close together, some actually being built partway up the surrounding walls, though it took until a large, elaborately decorated tree came into view as they rounded a corner that he realized that he had stumbled into the Kirkwall alienage.

He hesitated for a moment, unsure. He'd never been anywhere near this section of Kirkwall, and he had the very strong impression that he was intruding on a place meant to be a safe space. He understood what it was like to have that taken from you, and was reluctant to do so himself, even when he was invited. Merrill was motioning for him to follow her however, and he was even less interested in arguing with her, so he started after her.

He stuck close to Merrill, barely raising his eyes from her feet. He didn't understand the body language of the humans from his own neighborhood, always uncertain of how he should walk or stand or act, and the idea of embarrassing Merrill the way he had always embarrassed his mother made his cheeks feel hot and tight. He looked away from the brightly painted lines tracing up the bark of the tree and towards the building they seemed to be aiming at.

It didn't look any different from any of the others, but Merrill was bouncing between steps as they drew closer, actually hopping on the tips of her toes. It made him smile, and he hid it behind his hand. He smiled too wide, always had. Too many teeth.

He watched from atop the latticework of his fingers as Merrill opened her door. It hadn't been locked. He frowned at that, but didn't have time to ponder it before he was ushered in, Merrill closing the door behind him.

He really wished he could have something positive to say about his first time in Merrill’s house, but it was dark inside, too dark for him to really make out anything, and he held himself stiffly, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He vaguely remembered hearing elves were better at seeing in the dark than humans, and looked over to see Merrill’s eyes reflecting a sharp green in the gloom. He couldn't see her pupils, just flat discs surrounded by the dark.

She was laughing to herself, and said something he half caught about fixing tea before she turned and left him to stand in the middle of what he was slowly figuring out was a large room. It wasn't divided with curtains, the way his family’s apartment was, and was instead full of furniture. Aging furniture, to be sure, but the sight of an entire room this size seemingly devoted to the use of one family was so outside of recent experience, he found it hard to take in.

He shifted uncomfortably, unsure how to take such luxury, and tried to turn his attention elsewhere. There was light, he discovered then, a small oil lamp of the kind whose brightness you could adjust. Relieved, and not really wanting to stand by himself in a dark house he didn't know, Garrett crowded towards the light.

It stood on a small end table crowded high with books (actual books! he marveled, with spines and covers and everything!) and a newspaper, one that looked to be several days old. He idly craned his head to see it, not expecting much.

In all of his time within Kirkwall, Garrett hadn't once seen a newspaper other than the ones put out by the chantry, and at first, that's what he thought it was. It wasn't until he saw the name at the top, The Wall, that he realized it wasn't, and stepped closer to peek at the headlines.

The type was small and squeezed closely together, making it hard to read at times, but what he saw stood a stark comparison to the official bulletins, with their lists of new crimes and rations and warnings of threats from the surrounding countries. This was full of detailed accounts of protests that waged throughout the city, protests that Garrett hadn't even been aware of, and the realization of just what this paper was hit him like a blow to the solar plexus.

Not one thing on this front page was something he was supposed to know. It was dangerous to read this, to even have it. People had been disappeared for spreading sedition. That's what this was. Sedition. A very real fear spread chill threads through his veins, but once he'd started to read, he found it impossible to stop.

Dozens of protests were covered just on the front page, and he didn't know what to focus on first. His eyes flew across the page, darting from headline to headline to opening line to opening line, until they fell on a half-caught mention of Ferelden, and he forgot how to breathe.

Before he even finished the first line, Garrett had snatched up the paper. He smoothed his thumb over the faint texture of his home, shuddering out a breath that threatened to choke him. This was the first time in over a year that he'd gotten even indirect news about his country, and now that he had seen it, he felt his eyes itching and burning. He scrubbed at them impatiently with hands that shook as he read about demands for the chantry to release information on the plague said to stalk Fereldan, the reason behind the Kirkwall chantry’s putting the entire western continent under quarantine.

It went on to say that about a dozen people, both protesters and bystanders, had been “detained” by the templars, which everyone knew meant that they would return with grievous injuries, if they returned at all. It did not list names, or descriptions, just a request both for prayers from several faiths as well as for people willing to lend aid to do so through “the usual methods.”

“What does that mean?” He muttered to himself, but the article did not say. Nor did it say who had written the article, as other newspapers did, instead ending with a stylized V. Looking from article to article, almost all of them did.

Finding no answers there, he moved onto a description of a labor strike, then a protest regarding the release of a maleficar sympathizer who, it said, had previously been the ambassador to Rivain. There were dozens of stories, an overwhelming assault, battering him again and again. It was difficult to read, even as something, some strange mix of emotions he didn't know to describe, or want to, compelled him to. He had barely finished half of the front page before the words started to blur into a confusion of ink and movement, and he had to stop. Had to put the paper down.

“Bit of a mess, isn't it?”

Garrett jumped, near crushing the paper as his hands flew up to shield his face. His heart skipped a beat, sheer, unthinking terror dropping his mouth around a soundless cry, and when it started again it was with a painful lurch that made him gasp, that made him cringe.

He huddled behind the paper, his heart now hammering in his ears, making it even more difficult than usual to make out what was being said. “-ry,” he heard as he slowly lowered the paper away, enough to make out the soft curve of Merrill’s nose. It was wrinkled in a wince, throwing the golden tints of her skin into darker patterns. She said something else that Garrett didn't catch, but he nodded anyway.

Merrill responded the way he'd hoped, with a smile, and without asking for a response he didn't have. He barely had control over his breathing, much less words. He nodded again, fervently, when Merrill asked him something else, but this time it seemed Merrill expected something from him, because she'd held out a hand.

Without thinking, Garrett thrust the paper into Merrill’s hand, assuming she'd asked for it. The way Merrill hesitated afterwards told him he'd guessed wrong, and Garrett started to babble a hasty apology, already holding himself stiff in anticipation of an exasperated sigh and a lecture.

He received neither.

Far from being reassuring, however, the lack of it made him cringe back, watching Merrill’s movements carefully. Always before, seeming patience with him had never ended well.

Merrill was moving slowly, careful to keep her hands where Garrett could see them, but even that, even the soft way she spoke, did nothing but make him fear the drop of the other shoe more and more.

After a time, she stepped back, perching herself on a nearby sofa. The added space between them was some comfort, and he was able to catch his breath, after what felt like too long, long enough that the teacups he could now see Merrill had left on a coffee table were no longer steaming. “Sorry,” he muttered, and Merrill lifted a shoulder and let it fall.

“It's just a small thing,” she said. “People get scared all the time. Hopefully not of me, or not always, but I don't mind! Oh, but um,” he stiffened again when she hesitated, expecting her to drop that dreaded shoe, but she only said, “I didn't know what kind of tea you like, so I made chamomile. Or rather, I threw together what we can get that sort of tastes like chamomile, if you squint.”

“How would squinting help how something tastes?” He asked without thinking about it, and she laughed. Not a mocking laugh, but an honestly amused snorting thing stuffed into a hand.

“Well,” she said, “if you can have eyes bigger than your stomach, maybe they can send messages the other way? I don't know,” she sighed. “It's just dandelions and a few green things that smelled nice. Maybe if you pretend really hard.”

Garrett honestly did not remember what chamomile was supposed to taste like in the first place, but he supposed, taking a sip, it couldn't taste too much different from dandelions and hope. He told her it was fine, and her eyes went crinkly. “I'm trying to recreate things my parents may have had with the dalish, too,” she told him with a strange tone in her voice, “but it's been so long, and nobody here was from Fereldan, let alone Nevarra.” She looked down at her teacup and sighed, before looking back up at him. “Have you ever been to Nevarra?” She asked him, and he shook his head.

“Rivain once,” he said, surprising himself with the answer. He hadn't told anyone that in… A long time. Too long, maybe, because the word felt strange coming out of his mouth. “A long time ago. Then Fereldan. Nowhere else.”

“Still looking for it in other places?” She asked him. He looked down at her hands to avoid looking at the twist of her brows. They were clasped white knuckled around her teacup, and he paused, mouth working around the shape of words he almost said, before choosing others.

“Sometimes. But it's not here.” Home was not Kirkwall, and never had been. Home wasn't Fereldan either, or even Rivain. Home had always been his brother and sister and his father’s laugh. And it wasn't here.

Her hands went loose on the teacup, before she set it aside. “We’ll find it,” she said. The bounce was back in her voice, but he didn't know if it was real or not, if it ever had been. “But right now, I think you ought to find a bed before you fall down.”

He opened his mouth to argue, only for it to turn into a yawn. She laughed again, this time with a softer edge to it that made him smile, too. “Don't look at me like that,” she said. “You're a guest. The rules of hospitality come first, always.”

He wasn't entirely clear on what that meant, but he wasn't going to ask, either. He allowed himself to be led off to a side room that was separated by a real door, another unheard of luxury that he would have to appreciate more in the morning. she was too worn out in too many ways to spare it more than a glance, now. Inside, here was a single, small bed against the wall, flanked by a dresser, and a tall piece of furniture covered with a blanket.

He eyed it, more to give Merrill some bit of privacy than because he was genuinely interested. He'd judged this to be her room, and figured she deserved the opportunity to hide anything she'd missed the first time around. When he turned, she had a quilted pillow in her hand on top of a thin laptop, leaving one pillow for the bed. “I'll leave you to it!” She chirped. “If you're hungry later, just wake me up, I can fix you something.”

He really doubted he would do that, but he nodded anyway, because it seemed to be what she wanted. He must have been right, because she then left, leaving him alone in a yet another unfamiliar room. At least this time, he was borrowing it from someone who could give him permission.

He waited until he heard the couch finish creaking out in the living room before he reached under his shirt to loosen and rearrange a few things. Even if he couldn't be completely comfortable anywhere, he could do that much, and it did help, enough that as he wriggled into the bed, he could almost forget all that he had done and not done, and still had yet to do.

Almost, but not entirely.

It was that small sliver that lingered in his mind that kept him awake for some time afterward, wondering if that weight he could feel pressing down on his chest would crush him before he woke. Hoping.


	14. Chapter 14

Garrett came awake with a lurch that nearly sent him tumbling out of Merrill’s narrow bed. He sat straight up for a moment, chest heaving as far as restrictions allowed, as he tried to process the noises that had woken him up. It was a number of loud voices, all flowing over and on top of each other in a confusing mass that made his teeth hurt. Merrill and Justice, or Anders. It sounded like Justice’s boom, but the slight hush to the end of the words was all Anders, and it drew him up out of bed and into the main room.

Garrett hunched down, further than his usual, and peered around the corner into the kitchen, where Anders was pacing the kitchen. “-knew,” he was saying, “you knew we needed him yesterday, and you still didn't let us know you'd found him?”

Merrill whirled around and snapped, “I knew he needed _you_ , needed _us_. So I helped. Of course I did. What did you want me to do, throw him out in the cold so the very next patrol would find him?” She snorted and turned her back on them, Anders and Vengeance both, her back stiff, and busier herself with the dishes.

“I know you have different aims,” Anders ventured with more than a touch of impatience, “but surely you can see-”

Merrill slammed a clay bowl down hard enough that it splintered with a sharp crack. “You don't see anything,” she said without turning around, “except what you want to see. That boy is no different from-”

“From you?” Anders was right behind Merrill suddenly. “That's what you were going to say, wasn't it. Don't confuse his loss with yours. He's lost everything. You never had anything to lose.”

If Merrill flinched at all, Garrett didn't see it. “And you're going to cost him everything he has left,” she snapped right back, her voice brittle and sharp as the shards littering her hands.

What did he mean, she'd never had anything to lose? Garrett wondered, and despite himself crept closer. He stopped mid-step just as Merrill said, “And what do you think you're going to accomplish, bringing him to the houses of the dead? He isn't part of your underground. He doesn't recognize them, doesn't care. All you're doing by digging up graves is getting dirty.”

“I haven't started digging graves,” Anders said in a low voice Garrett could barely make out, and moved that much closer. From where he was now, hunched just behind the kitchen table, he could see the curl of Anders’s fingers into claws. Or maybe it was Justice’s. It was hard, sometimes, when their causes were so much the same. “Up or down. When I do, you'll know.”

Merrill still wasn't looking at them, but now she bent over the sink, spreading her arms wide on the countertop, as if in flight. Garrett saw bright smears of blood left behind in the path of her hands. “Is that a threat?” Her voice was calm.

“You figure it out,” Anders said, turning on his heel just as Garrett ducked beneath the table. “You're good at puzzles.”

Merrill was still breathing hard several minutes after Anders and Justice had made their exit, bent over the sink with her bloodied hands cupping her face. “Heard that, did you?” She asked without turning around. Caught, Garrett sheepishly crawled out from under the table, to her tired smile.

“I- he didn't mean that,” Garrett said finally, searching for something to say that would erase that look on Merrill’s face, one put there by someone Garrett found it hard to guiltily push into the back of his mind, even for now.

“If that's how you want to see it,” Merrill said, turning to begin rinsing her hands. They'd left long tracks on her cheeks, like tears. “Won't be able to change your mind, will I? You think the sun shines out of their arse. Who am I to tell you otherwise?”

Garrett chewed on the inside of his cheek and looked away, unable to bring himself to pick a side against Anders and Justice, even when Merrill had recently been so kind to him. “Don't remember leaving,” he mumbled instead. He couldn't look her in the eyes. It was just like at school, when he was caught wandering the halls with no memory of how he'd gotten there.

Merrill leaned back on her elbows, watching him with her head tilted. “What do you remember?” She asked curiously.

Garrett looked away with a shrug. He remembered… He frowned, furrowing his brow. He remembered Fenris leaving, and wanting to find him, but nothing else beyond a vague sense of unease he couldn't really place. “Where's Fenris?” He asked in lieu of an answer, and she gave a shrug of her own.

“No one’s seen him,” she said, sending a lance of fear through him. “He does that sometimes though,” Merrill hastened to reassure him. “Goes off on his own to calm down or run errands for Varric.”

“Varric?” Garrett’s head snapped up. “He's involved in all this?”

Merrill winced and swore quietly, which did very little to calm the alarms trilling up and down Garrett’s skull. “A bit,” Merrill admitted, her chin pointing away, after the direction of her eyes.

“A bit?” Garrett’s mouth worked. What did that mean? “How am I supposed to trust any of you?” He asked finally, a plaintive thing, small and lost. “No one tells me anything, and when they do, it's not enough, it's never enough.”

“I know,” Merrill said, wringing her hands. “I know and I'm sorry, but you have to-”

You have to be patient. You have to listen, to sit still and be quiet and do what you're told, words and words and words that built up until he was drowning beneath them, couldn't breathe.

He stumbled back, away, out towards the door. She let him go, her face twisted in on itself like she wanted to say something or was in pain, but he burst through the door and was out before either he or she could decide.

He needed to find Fenris. Find Varric. Find anyone who would be honest with him, just this once, and then maybe he could be honest with them. 


End file.
